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y 

International Scientific Series, 
volume lxxxix. 



The International Scientific Series 



Edited by F. Legge 

THE MIND AND THE 
BRAIN 

BT 

ALFRED BINET 

DnUKTBTJR DU LABORATOIRl DI PSYCHOLOGIK 
1 LA 80RBOHHE 



BRING THE AUTHORISED TRANSLATION OF 

UAME ET LK CORf$ \ 



LONDON 

KEG AN PAUL, TRENCH, TRttBNER & CO. L^ 

DRTDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W. 
1907 



572422 A 



rtfrfai of translation and of reproduction art retried 



Printed by Ballakttm, Hahsom & Co. 
At the BftlUntjrae Frees 



CONTENTS 



BOOK I 
The Definition of Matter 



CHAPTER I 

Introduction 

The distinction between mind and matter — Knowable not 
homogeneous — Criterion employed, enumeration not 
concepts . . . . v 



CHAPTER II 

Our Knowledge of External Objects onlt 
Sensation 

Modern theories of matter — Outer world only known to 
us by our sensations — Instances — Mill's approval of 
proposition, and its defects — Nervous system only 
intermediary between self and outer world — The 
great X of Matter — Nervous system does not give 
us true image — Mullens law of specificity of the 
^ _ nerves — The nervous system itself a sensation — Rc- 
lations of sensation with the unknowable the affair 

00 of metaphysics 

v.i 



viii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER HI 
The Mechanical Theories of Matter are only 
Symbols 

Physicists vainly endeavour to reduce the r61e of sensation 
— Mathematical, energetical, and mechanical theories 
of universe — Mechanical model formed from sensation 
— Instance of tuning-fork — No one sensation any 
right to hegemony over others 

CHAPTER IV 

Answers to some Objections, and Summary 

Objections of spiritualists — Of German authors who con- 
tend that nervous system does give true image — Of 
metaphysicians — Common ground of objection that 
nervous system not intermediary — Answer to this — 
Summary of preceding chapters 

BOOK II 
The Definition of Mind 

CHAPTER I 

The Distinction between Cognition and its 
Object 

Necessity for inventory of mental phenomena — Objects of 
cognition and acts of cognition — Definition of con- 
sciousness 

CHAPTER H 

Definition of Sensation 

Sensation denned by experimental psychology — A state of 
consciousness — Considered self-evident by Mill, Re- 
nouvier, and Hume — Psycho-physical according to 
Reid and Hamilton— Reasons in favour of last defini- 
tion—Other opinions examined and refuted 



CONTENTS 



ix 



CHAPTER HI 
Definition of the Image 

pagh 

Perception and ideation cannot be separated — Perception 
constituted by addition of image to sensation — Hallu- 
cinations — Objections anticipated and answered . . 76 



CHAPTER IV 

Definition of the Emotions 

Contrary opinions as to nature of emotions — Emotion a 
phenomenon tui generic — Intellectualist theory of 
emotion supported by Lange and James — Is emotion 
only a perception? Is effort? — Question left un- 
answered ■ . .88 



CHAPTER V 

Definition of the Consciousness-— The Relation 
Subject-Objkct 

Can thoughts be divided into subject and object ? — This 
division cannot apply to the consciousness — Subject 
of cognition itself an object— James' opinion examined 
— Opinion that subject is spiritual substance and con- 
sciousness its faculty refuted 96 



CHAPTER VI 

Definition of the Consciousness — Categories of 
the Understanding 

Principle of relativity doubted — Tables of categories : 
Aristotle, Kant, and Renouvier — Kantian idealism — 
Phenomenism of Berkeley examined and rejected — 
Argument of a priorists — The intelligence only an 
inactive consciousness — Huxley's epiphenomenal con- 
sciousness — Is the consciousness necessary ? — Impos- 
sibility of answering this question .... 103 

b 



X 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER VII 

Definition op the Consciousness— The Separa- 
bility op the Consciousness from its Object 
— Discussion of Idealism 

Can the consciousness be separated from its object ? — 
Idealists consider the object a modality of the con- 
sciousness and thus inseparable from it — Futility of 
this doctrine — Object can exist without consciousness 

CHAPTER VIII 

Definition of the Consciousness — The Separa- 
tion of the Consciousness from its object 
—The Unconscious 

Can ideas exist without consciousness? — No conscious- 
ness without an object — Can the consciousness 
die?— Enfeeblement of consciousness how accounted 
for — Doubling of consciousness in hysterics — Re- 
lations of physiological phenomena to consciousness 
— Consciousness cannot become unconscious and yet 
exist 

CHAPTER IX 

Definitions of Psychology 

Difficulty of defining psychology — Definition by sub- 
stance — Psychology not the science of the soul — 
Definition by enumeration : its error — Definition by 
method contradicts idea of consciousness— Externo- 
spection and introspection sometimes confused — 
Definition by content — Facts cannot be divided into 
those of consciousness and of unconsciousness — 
Descartes' definition of psychology insufficient — 
44 Within and without" simile un analogous — Defini- 
tion by point of view — Inconsistencies of Ebbinghaus' 
contention — W. James' teleological theory — Definition 
by the peculiar nature of mental laws only one 
possible : why ? 



CONTENTS 



zi 



BOOK III 
The Union op the Soxtl and the Body 

CHAPTER I 
The Mind has an Incomplete Life 

PA.GB 

Problem of anion of mind and body stated — Axiom of 
heterogeneity must be rejected — Phenomena of 
consciousness incomplete — Aristotle's relatum and 
corrdatum applied to the terms mind and matter . 179 

CHAPTER II 

Spiritualism and Idealism 

Spiritualist view that death cute link between soul and 
body — Explanation of link fatal to system — Conscious- 
ness cannot exercise functions without objects of 
cognition — Idealism a kaleidoscopic system — Four 
affirmations of idealism: their inconsistency — Ad- 
vantages of historical method 191 



CHAPTER HI 

Materialism and Parallelism 

Materialism oldest doctrine of all : many patristic authors 
lean towards it — Modern form of, receives impulse from 
advance of physical science — Earl Vogt's comparison 
of secretions of brain with that of kidneys— All 
materialist doctrines opposed to principle of hetero- 
geneity — Modern materialism would make object 
generate consciousness — Materialists cannot demon- 
strate how molecular vibrations can be transformed into 
objects — Parallelism avoids issue by declaring mind 
to be function of brain — Parallelists declare physical 
and psychical life to be two parallel currents — Bain's 
support of this — Objections to : most important that it 
postulates consciousness as a complete whole . 201 



zii 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER IV 
Modern Theories 

PAOB 

Berkeley's idealism revived by Bergson, though with 
different standpoint — Admirable nature of Bergson's 
exposition — Fallacy of, part assigned to -sensory 
nerves — Conscious sensations must be subsequent to 
excitement of sensory nerves and dependent on their 
integrity 225 



CHAPTER V 

Conclusion 

Author's own theory only a hypothesis — Important con- 
ditions for solution of problem — Manifestations of 
consciousness conditioned by brain, but this last un- 
conscious — Consciousness perceives only external 
object — Specificity of nerves not absolute — Why re- 
peated excitements of nerve tend to become un- 
conscious—Formation of habit and " instinct " — 
Resemblance to and distinction of this from parallelism 
— Advantages of new theory 234 



CHAPTER VI 

Rega pitulation 

Description of matter— Definition of mind — Objections 
to, answered — Incomplete existence of mind — Other 
theories — Nervous system must add its own effect to 
that of its excitant 256 



BOOK I 

THE DEFINITION OF MATTER 



A 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 1 



CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

This book is a prolonged effort to establish a 
distinction between what is called mind and 
what is called matter. Nothing is more simple 
than to realise this distinction when you do 
not go deeply into it; nothing is more difficult 
when you analyse it a little. At first sight, it 
seems impossible to confuse things so far apart 
as a thought and a block of stone ; but on reflec- 
tion this great contrast vanishes, and other 
differences have to be sought which are less 
apparent and of which one has not hitherto 
dreamed. 

First let us say how the question presents 
itself to us. The fact which we must take as 

1 L'Ame tt It Corpt. — Disagreeable as it is to alter an author's 
title, the words " Soul and Body" had to be abandoned because 
of their different connotation in English. The title " Mind 
and Body " was also preoccupied by Bain's work of that name 
in this series. The title chosen has M. Binet's approval.— Ed. 

3 



4 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

a starting point, for it is independent of every 
kind of theory, is that there exists something 
which is "knowable." Not only science, but 
ordinary life and our everyday conversation, 
imply that there are things that we know. It 
is with regard to these things that we have 
to ask ourselves if some belong to what we 
call the mind and others to what we call 
matter. 

Let us suppose, by way of hypothesis, the 
knowable to be entirely and absolutely homo- 
geneous. In that case we should be obliged to 
set aside the question as one already decided. 
Where everything is homogeneous, there is no 
distinction to be drawn. But this hypothesis is, 
as we all know, falsified by observation. The 
whole body of the knowable is formed from an 
agglomeration of extremely varied elements, 
amongst which it is easy to distinguish a 
large number of divisions. Things may be 
classified according to their colour, their shape, 
their weight, the pleasure they give us, their 
quality of being alive or dead, and so on; one 
much given to classification would only be 
troubled by the number of possible distinctions. 

Since so many divisions are possible, at which 
shall we stop and say: this is the one which 
corresponds exactly to the opposition of mind 
and matter? The choice is not easy to make; 



INTRODUCTION 



5 



for we shall see that certain authors put the 
distinction between the physical and the mental 
in one thing, others in another. Thus there 
have been a very large number of distinctions 
proposed, and their number is much greater 
than is generally thought. Since we propose to 
make ourselves judges of these distinctions, since, 
in fact, we shall reject most of them in order 
to suggest entirely new ones, it must be supposed 
that we shall do so by means of a criterion. Other- 
wise, we should only be acting fantastically. We 
should be saying peremptorily, " In my opinion 
this is mental/' and there would be no more 
ground for discussion than if the assertion were 
" I prefer the Romanticists to the Classicists/' or 
" I consider prose superior to poetry." 

The criterion which I have employed, and which 
I did not analyse until the unconscious use I had 
made of it revealed its existence to me, is based 
on the two following rules : — 

1. A Rule of Method. — The distinction between 
mind and matter must not only apply to the 
whole of the knowable, but must be the deepest 
which can divide the knowable, and must further 
be one of a permanent character. A priori, 
there is nothing to prove the existence of such 
a distinction; it must be sought for and, when 
found, closely examined. 

2. An Indication of Hie Direction in which the 



6 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



Search must be Made. — Taking into account the 
position already taken up by the majority of 
philosophers, the manifestation of mind, if it 
exists, must be looked for in the domain of 
facts dealt with by psychology, and the mani- 
festation of matter in the domain explored by 
physicists. 

I do not conceal from myself that there may be 
much that is arbitrary in my own criterion; but 
this does not seem to me possible to avoid. We 
must therefore appeal to psychology, and ask 
whether it is cognisant of any phenomenon offer- 
ing a violent, lasting, and ineffaceable contrast 
with all the rest of the knowable. 

The Method of Concepts and the Method of 
Enumeration. — Many authors are already en- 
gaged in this research, and employ a method 
which I consider very bad and very dangerous — 
the method of concepts. This consists in look- 
ing at real and concrete phenomena in their 
most abstract form. For example, in studying 
the mind, they use this word "mind" as a general 
idea which is supposed to contain all the charac- 
teristics of psychical phenomena ; but they do not 
wait to enumerate these characteristics or to realise 
them, and they remain satisfied with the extremely 
vague idea springing from an unanalysed concept. 
Consequently they use the word " mind " with the 
imprudence of a banker who should discount a 



INTRODUCTION 



7 



trade bill without ascertaining whether the pay- 
ment of that particular piece of paper had been 
provided for. This amounts to saying that 
the discussion of philosophical problems takes 
especially a verbal aspect ; and the more complex 
the phenomena a concept thus handled contains, 
the more dangerous it is. A concept of the colour 
red has but a very simple content, and by using 
it, this content can be very clearly represented. 
But how can the immense meaning of the word 
" mind " be realised every time that it is used ? 
For example, to define mind and to separate it from 
the rest of the knowable which is called matter, 
the general mode of reasoning is as follows : all 
the knowable which is apparent to our senses is 
essentially reduced to motion ; " mind/' that some- 
thing which lives, feels, and judges, is reduced to 
" thought." To understand the difference between 
matter and mind, it is necessary to ask one's self 
whether there exists any analogy in nature between 
motion and thought. Now this analogy does not 
exist, and what we comprehend, on the contrary, is 
their absolute opposition. Thought is not a move- 
ment, and has nothing in common with a movement. 
A movement is never anything else but a displace- 
ment, a transfer, a change of place undergone by 
a particle of matter. What relation of similarity 
exists between this geometrical fact and a desire, 
an emotion, a sensation of bitterness ? Far from 



8 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



being identical, these two facts are as distinct as 
any facts can be, and their distinction is so deep 
that it should be raised to the height of a prin- 
ciple, the principle of heterogeneity. 

This is almost exactly the reasoning that num- 
bers of philosophers have repeated for several 
years without giving proof of much originality. 
This is what I term the metaphysics of concept, 
for it is a speculation which consists in juggling 
with abstract ideas. The moment that a philo- 
sopher opposes thought to movement, I ask myself 
under what form he can think of a "thought." 
I suppose he must very poetically and very 
vaguely represent to himself something light and 
subtle which contrasts with the weight and 
grossness of material bodies. And thus our 
philosopher is punished in the sinning part; his 
contempt of the earthly has led him into an 
abuse of abstract reasoning, and this abuse has 
made him the dupe of a very naYve physical 
metaphor. 

At bottom I have not much faith in the 
nobility of many of our abstract ideas. In a 
former psychological study 1 I have shown that 
many of our abstractions are nothing else than 
embryonic, and, above all, loosely defined concrete 
ideas, which can satisfy only an indolent mind, and 
are, consequently, full of snares. 

1 iutde experimentaU de VInUUigence. Paris : Schleioher. 



INTRODUCTION 



9 



The opposition between mind and matter 
appears to me to assume a very different mean- 
ing if, instead of repeating ready-made formulas 
and wasting time on the game of setting concept 
against concept, we take the trouble to return 
to the study of nature, and begin by drawing 
up an inventory of the respective phenomena of 
mind and matter, examining with each of these 
phenomena the characteristics in which the first- 
named differ from the second. It is this last 
method, more slow but more sure than the 
other, that we shall follow ; and we will com- 
mence by the study of matter. 



CHAPTER II 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS IS 
ONLY SENSATIONS 

Of late years numerous studies have been pub- 
lished on the conception of matter, especially 
by physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. 
Among these recent contributions to science I 
will quote the articles of Duhem on the 
Evolution of Mechanics published in 1903 in 
the Revue ginirale des Sciences, and other 
articles by the same author, in 1904, in the 
Revue de Philosophic Duhem's views have at- 
tracted much attention, and have dealt a serious 
blow at the whole theory of the mechanics of 
matter. Let me also quote that excellent work 
of Dastre, La Vie et la Mort, wherein the author 
makes so interesting an application to biology of 
the new theories on energetics ; the discussion be- 
tween Ostwald and Brillouin on matter, in which 
two rival conceptions find themselves engaged in a 
veritable hand-to-hand struggle (Revue gintrale 
des Sciences, Nov. and Dec. 1895); the curious 
work of Dantec on les Lois Natwrettes, in which 
the author ingeniously points out the different 

xo 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS u 



sensorial districts into which science is divided, 
although, through a defect in logic, he accepts 
mechanics as the final explanation of things. 
And last, it is impossible to pass over, in silence, 
the rare works of Lord Kelvin, so full, for 
French readers, of unexpected suggestions, for 
they show us the entirely practical and em- 
pirical value which the English attach to 
mechanical models. 

My object is not to go through these great 
studios in detail. It is the part of mathematical 
and physical philosophers to develop their ideas 
on the inmost nature of matter, while seeking to 
establish theories capable of giving a satisfactory 
explanation of physical phenomena. This is the 
point of view they take up by preference, and no 
doubt they are right in so doing. The proper rdle 
of the natural sciences is to look at phenomena 
taken by themselves and apart from the observer. 

My own intention, in setting forth these same 
theories on matter, is to give prominence to a 
totally different point of view. Instead of con- 
sidering physical phenomena in themselves, we 
shall seek to know what idea one ought to form 
of their nature when one takes into account 
that they are observed phenomena. While the 
physicist withdraws from consideration the part 
of the observer in the verification of physical 
phenomena, our rdle is to renounce this abstrac- 



12 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



tion, to re-establish things in their original com- 
plexity, and to ascertain in what the conception 
of matter consists when it is borne in mind that 
all material phenomena are known only in their 
relation to ourselves, to our bodies, our nerves, 
and our intelligence. 

This at once leads us to follow, in the exposition 
of the facts, an order which the physicist abandons. 
Since we seek to know what is the physical pheno- 
menon we perceive, we must first enunciate this 
proposition, which will govern the whole of our 
discussion : to wit — 

Of the outer world we know nothing except our 
sensations. 

Before demonstrating this proposition, let us 
develop it by an example which will at least 
give us some idea of its import. Let us take as 
example one of those investigations in which, 
with the least possible recourse to reasoning, the 
most perfected processes of observation are em- 
ployed, and in which one imagines that one is 
penetrating almost into the very heart of nature. 
Wo are, let us suppose, dissecting an animal. 
After killing it, we lay bare its viscera, examine 
their colour, form, dimensions, and connections; 
then we dissect the organs in order to ascertain 
their internal nature, their texture, structure, 
and function ; then, not content with ocular 
anatomy, we have recourse to the perfected pro- 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 13 



oesses of histology: we take a fragment of the 
tissues weighing a few milligrammes, we fix it, we 
mount it, we make it into strips of no more than 
a thousandth of a millimetre thick, we colour it 
and place it under the microscope, we examine it 
with the most powerful lenses, we sketch it, and 
we explain it. All this work of complicated and 
refined observation, sometimes lasting months and 
years, results in a monograph containing minute 
descriptions of organs, of cells, and of intra-cellular 
structures, the whole represented and defined 
in words and pictures. Now, these descriptions 
and drawings are the display of the various sen- 
sations which the zoologist has experienced in the 
course of his labours ; to these sensations are 
added the very numerous interpretations derived 
from the memory, reasoning, and often, also, from 
the imagination on the part of the scholar, the 
last a source at once of errors and of discoveries. 
But everything properly experimental in the work 
of the zoologist proceeds from the sensations he 
has felt or might have felt, and in the particular 
case treated of, these sensations are almost solely 
visual. 

This observation might be repeated with regard 
to all objects of the outer world which enter 
into relation with us. Whether the knowledge 
of them be of the commonplace or of a scientific 
order matters little. Sensation is its limit, and 




14 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

all objects are known to us by the sensations they 
produce in us, and are known to us solely in this 
manner. A landscape is nothing but a cluster of 
sensations. The outward form of a body is simply 
sensation; and the innermost and most delicate 
material structure, the last visible elements of a 
cell, for example, are all, in so far as we observe 
them with the microscope, nothing but sensation. 

This being understood, the question is, why 
we have just admitted — with the majority of 
authors — that we cannot really know a single 
object as it is in itself, and in its own nature, 
otherwise than by the intermediary of the sensa- 
tions it provokes in us ? This comes back to saying 
that we here require explanations on the two 
following points: why do we admit that we do 
not really perceive the objects, but only some- 
thing intermediate between them and us; and 
why do we call this something intermediate a 
sensation ? On this second point I will offer, for 
the time being, one simple remark: we use the 
term sensation for lack of any other to express 
the intermediate character of our perception of 
objects, and this use does not, on our part, imply 
any hypothesis. Especially do we leave com- 
pletely in suspense the question whether sensa- 
tion, is a material phenomenon or a state of 
being of the mind. These are questions we will 
deal with later. For the present it must be 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 15 



understood that the word sensation is simply 
a term for the something intermediate between 
the object and our faculty of cognition. 1 We 
have, therefore, simply to state why we have 
admitted that the external perception of objects 
is produced mediately or by procuration. 

There are a few philosophers, and those not of 
the lowest rank, who have thought that this 
intermediate character of all perception was so 
evident that there was no need to insist further 
upon it. John Stuart Mill, who was certainly and 
perhaps more than anything a careful logician, 
commences an exposition of the idealist thesis to 
which he was so much attached, by carelessly 
saying: "It goes without saying that objects are 
known to us through the intermediary of our 
senses. . . . The senses are equivalent to our 
sensations ; " 2 and on those propositions ho roars 
his whole system. " It goes without saying ..." 
is a trifle thoughtless. I certainly think he was 
wrong in not testing more carefully the solidity of 
his starting point. 

In the first place, this limit set to our knowledge 
of the objects which stimulate our sensations is 
only accepted without difficulty by well-informed 

1 Connautance. — The word cognition is used throughout as 
the English equivalent of this, except in places where the con- 
text shows that it means acquaintance merely. — Ed. 

2 J. S. MILL, An Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton' 's Philosophy, 
pp. 5 and 6. London. 1865. 



i6 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



persons; it much astonishes the uninstructed 
when first explained to them. And this astonish- 
ment, although it may seem so, is not a point that 
can be neglected, for it proves that, in the first 
and simple state of our knowledge, we believe 
we directly perceive objects as they are. Now, 
if we, the cultured class, have, for the most part, 1 
abandoned this primitive belief, we have only 
done so on certain implicit conditions, of which 
we must take cognisance. This is what I shall 
now demonstrate as clearly as I can. 

Take the case of an unlearned person. To prove 
to him that he knows sensations alone and not 
the bodies which excite them, a very striking 
argument may be employed which requires no 
subtle reasoning and which appeals to his ob- 
servation. This is to inform him, supposing he 
is not aware of the fact, that, every time he has 
the perception of an exterior object, there is some- 
thing interposed between the object and himself, 
and that that something is his nervous system. 

If we were not acquainted with the existence of 
our nervous system, we should unhesitatingly admit 
that our perception of objects consisted in some 
sort of motion towards the places in which they 
were fixed. Now, a number of experiments prove 
to us that objects are known to us as excitants of 

i A few subtle philosophers have returned to it, as I shall 
how later in chapter iv. 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 17 



our nervous system which only act on this system 
by entering into communication, or coming into 
contact with, its terminal extremities. They then 
produce, in the interior of this system, a peculiar 
modification which we are not yet able to define. 
It is this modification which follows the course 
of the nerves and is carried to the central parts 
of the system. The speed of the propagation of 
this nerve modification has been ' measured by 
certain precise experiments in psychometry; the 
journey is made slowly, at the rate of 20 to 30 
metres per second, and it is of interest that this 
rate of speed lets us know at what moment and, 
consequently, by what organic excitement, the 
phenomenon of consciousness is produced. This 
happens when the cerebral centres are affected ; the 
phenomenon of consciousness is therefore posterior 
to the fact of the physical excitement. 

I believe it has required a long series of accepted 
observations for us to have arrived at this idea, 
now so natural in appearance, that the modifi- 
cations produced within our nervous system 
are the only states of which we can have a 
direct consciousness; and as experimental de- 
monstration is always limited, there can be no 
absolute certainty that things never happen other- 
wise, that we never go outside ourselves, and that 
neither our consciousness nor our nervous influx 
can exteriorise itself, shoot beyond our material 

B 




1 8 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

organs, and travel afar in pursuit of objects in 
order to know or to modify them. 

Before going further, we must make our 
terminology more precise. We have just seen the 
necessity of drawing a distinction between the 
sensations of which we are conscious and the un- 
known cause which produces these sensations by 
acting on our nervous systems. This exciting 
cause I have several times termed, in order to be 
^ understood, the external object. But under the 
name of external object are currently designated 
groups of sensations, such as those which make 
up for us a chair, a tree, an animal, or any kind 
of body. I see a dog pass in the street. I call this 
dog an external object ; but, as this dog is formed, 
for me who am looking at it, of my sensations, 
and as these sensations are states of my nervous 
centres, it happens that the term external object 
has two meanings. Sometimes it designates our 
sensations ; at another, the exciting cause of our 
sensations. To avoid all confusion we will call 
this exciting cause, which is unknown to us, the 
X of matter. 

It is, however, not entirely unknown, for we at 
least know two facts with regard to it. We know, 
first, that this X exists, and in the second place, 
that its image must not be sought in the sensa- 
tions it excites in us. How can we doubt, we say, 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 19 

that it exists? The same external observation 
proves to us at once that there exists an object 
distinct from our nerves, and that our nerves 
separate us from it. I insist on this point, 
for the reason that some authors, after having 
unreservedly admitted that our knowledge is 
confined to sensations, have subsequently been 
hard put to it to demonstrate the reality of the 
excitant distinct from the sensations. 1 ^ Of this we 
need no demonstration, and the testimony of our 
senses suffices. We have seen the excitant, and 
it is like a friend who should pass before us in 
disguise so well costumed and made up that we 
can attribute to his real self nothing of what we 
see of him, but yet we know that it is he. 

And, in fact, let us remember what it is that 
we have argued upon — viz. on an observation. I 
look & my hand, and I see an object approaching 
it which gives me a sensation of feeling. I at 
first say that this object is an excitant. It is 
pointed out to me that I am in error. This 
object, which appears to me outside my nervous 
system, is composed, I am told, of sensations. Be 
it so, I have the right to answer ; but if all that 

1 Thus, the perplexity in which John Stuart Mill finds himself 
is very curious. Having admitted unreservedly that our know- 
ledge is confined to sensations, he is powerless to set up a reality 
outside this, and acknowledges that the principle of causality 
cannot legitimately be used to prove that our sensations have 
a cause which is not a sensation, because this principle cannot 
be applied outside the world of phenomena. 




20 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

I perceive is sensation, iny nervous system itself 
is a sensation ; if it is only that, it is no longer 
an intermediary between the excitant and myself, 
and it is the fact that we perceive things as they 
are. For it to be possible to prove that I perceive, 
not the object, but that tertium quid which is 
sensation, it has to be admitted that the nervous 
system is a reality external to sensation and 
that objects which assume, in relation to it, the 
rdle of excitants and of which we perceive the 
existence, are likewise realities external to sen- 
sation. 

This is what is demonstrated by abstract reason- 
ing, and this reasoning is further supported by 
a common -sense argument. The outer world 
cannot be summarised in a few nervous systems 
suspended like spiders in empty space. The 
existence of a nervous system implies that of a 
body in which it is lodged. This body must have 
complicated organs ; its limbs presuppose the soil 
on yrhich the animal rests, its lungs the existence 
of oxygen vivifying its blood, its digestive tube, 
aliments which it digests and assimilates to its 
substance, and so on. We may indeed admit 
that this outer world is not, in itself, exactly as 
we perceive it ; but we are compelled to recognise 
that it exists by the same right as the nervous 
system, in order to put it in its proper place. 

The second fact of observation is that the 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 21 



sensations we feel do not give us the true image 
of the material X which produces them. The 
modification made in our substance by this force 
X does not necessarily resemble in its nature the 
nature of that force. This is an assertion opposed 
to our natural opinions, and must consequently 
be demonstrated. It is generally proved by the 
experiments which reveal what is called "the 
law of the specific energy of the nerves." This 
is an important law in physiology discovered 
by Mtlller two centuries ago, and consequences 
of a philosophical order are attached to it. The 
facts on which this law is based are these. It is 
observed that, if the sensory nerves are agitated 
by an excitant which remains constant, the sensa- 
tions received by the patient differ according to 
the nerve affected. Thus, the terminals of an 
electric current applied to the ball of the eye 
give the sensation of a small luminous spark ; to 
the auditory apparatus, the current causes a 
crackling sound ; to the hand, the sensation of a 
shock; to the tongue, a metallic flavour. Con- 
versely, excitants wholly different, but affecting 
the same nerve, give similar sensations ; whether 
a ray of light is projected into the eye, or the 
eyeball be excited by the pressure of a finger; 
whether an electric current is directed into the 
eye, or, by a surgical operation, the optic nerve 
is severed by a bistoury, the effect is always the 



22 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



same, in the sense that the patient always receives 
a sensation of light. To sum up, in addition to 
the natural excitant of our sensory nerves, there 
are two which can produce the same sensory 
effects, that is to say, the mechanical and the 
electrical excitants. Whence it has been concluded 
that the peculiar nature of the sensation felt de- 
pends much less on the nature of the excitant 
producing it than on that of the sensory organ 
which collects it, the nerve which propagates it, or 
the centre which receives it. It would perhaps 
be going a little too far to affirm that the external 
object has no kind of resemblance to the sensations 
it gives us. It is safer to say that we are ignorant 
of the degree in which the two resemble or differ 
from each other. 

On thinking it over, it will be found that this 
contains a very great mystery, for this power of dis- 
tinction (specificity) of our nerves is not connected 
with any detail observable in their structure. It 
is very probably the receiving centres which are 
specific. It is owing to them and to their 
mechanism that we ought to feel, from the same 
excitant, a sensation of sound or one of colour, that 
is to say, impressions which appear, when com- 
pared, as the most different in the world. Now, so 
far as we can make out, the histological structure 
of our auditory centre is the same as that of our 
visual centre. Both are a collection of cells 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 23 

diverse in form, multipolar, and maintained by a 
conjunctive pellicule (stroma). The structure of 
the fibres and cells varies slightly in the motor 
and sensory regions, but no means have yet been 
discovered of perceiving a settled difference be- 
tween the nerve-cells of the optic centre and those 
of the auditory centre. There should be a differ- 
ence, as our mind demands it ; but our eye fails to 
note it. 

Let us suppose, however, that to-morrow, or 
several centuries hence, an improved technique 
should show us a material difference between the 
visual and the auditory neurone. There is no 
absurdity in this supposition ; it is a possible dis- 
covery, since it is of the order of material facts. 
Such a discovery, however, would lead us very far, 
for what terribly complicates this problem is that 
we cannot directly know the structure of our 
nervous system. Though close to us, though, so 
to speak, inside us, it is not known to us other- 
wise than is the object we hold in our hands, the 
ground we tread, or the landscape which forms 
our horizon. 

For us it is but a sensation, a real sensation 
when we observe it in the dissection of an animal, 
or the autopsy of one of our own kind ; an ima- 
ginary and transposed sensation, when we are 
studying anatomy by means of an anatomical 
chart; but still a sensation. It is by the inter- 



24 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

mediary of our nervous system that we have to per- 
ceive and imagine what a nervous system is like ; 
consequently we are ignorant as to the modificar- 
tion impressed on our perceptions and imaginations 
by this intermediary, the nature of which we are 
unable to grasp. 

Therefore, when we attempt to understand 
the inmost nature of the outer world, we stand 
before it as before absolute darkness. There 
probably exists in nature, outside of ourselves, 
neither colour, odour, force, resistance, space, nor 
anything that we know as sensation. Light is pro- 
duced by the excitement of the optic nerve, and 
it shines only in our brain ; as to the excitement 
itself, there is nothing to prove that it is luminous; 
outside of us is profound darkness, or even worse, 
since darkness is the correlation of light. In 
the same way, all the sonorous excitements which 
assail us, the creakings of machines, the sounds 
of nature, the words and cries of our fellows are 
produced by excitements of our acoustic nerve; 
it is in our brain that noise is produced, outside 
there reigns a dead silence. The same may be 
said of all our other senses. 

Not one of our senses, absolutely none, is the 
revealer of external reality. From this point of 
view there is no higher and no lower sense. 
The sensations of sight, apparently so objective 
and so searching, no more take us out of our- 



OUR KNOWLEDGE OF EXTERNAL OBJECTS 25 

selves than do the sensations of taste which are 
localised in the tongue. 

In short, our nervous system, which enables 
us to communicate with objects, prevents us, on 
the other hand, from knowing their nature. It 
is an organ of relation with the outer world; it 
is also, for us, a cause of isolation. We never 
go outside ourselves. We are walled in. And 
all we can say of matter and of the outer 
world is, that it is revealed to us solely by the 
sensations it affords us, that it is the unknown 
cause of our sensations, the inaccessible excitant 
of our organs of the senses, and that the ideas we 
are able to form as to the nature and the pro- 
perties of that excitant, are necessarily derived 
from our sensations, and are subjective to the 
same degree as those sensations themselves. 

But we must make haste to add that this 
point of view is the one which is reached when 
we regard the relations of sensation with its un- 
known cause the great X of matter. 1 Positive 
science and practical life do not take for an 
objective this relation of sensation with the 
Unknowable; they leave this to metaphysics. 
They distribute themselves over the study of 
sensation and examine the reciprocal relations 
of sensations with sensations. These last, con- 
demned as misleading appearances when we seek 
1 See p. 18, sup. — Ed. 



26 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

in thein the expression of the Unknowable, 
lose this illusory character when we consider 
them in their reciprocal relations. Then they 
constitute for us reality, the whole of reality 
and the only object of human knowledge. The 
world is but an assembly of present, past, and 
possible sensations; the affair of science is to 
analyse and co-ordinate them by separating their 
accidental from their constant relations. 



CHAPTER III 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER ARE 
ONLY SYMBOLS 

If we keep firmly in mind the preceding con- 
clusion — a conclusion which is neither exclu- 
sively my own, nor very new — we shall find a 
certain satisfaction in watching the discussions 
of physicists on the essence of matter, on the 
nature of force and of energy, and on the rela- 
tions of ponderable and unponderable matter. 
We all know how hot is the fight raging on 
this question. At the present time it is in- 
creasing in intensity, in consequence of the 
disturbance imported into existing theories by 
the new discoveries of radio-activity. 1 We psy- 
chologists can look on very calmly at these dis- 
cussions, with that selfish pleasure we unavowedly 
feel when we see people fighting while ourselves 
safe from knocks. We have, in fact, the feeling 
that, come what may from the discussions on 
the essence of matter, there can be no going 

1 I would draw attention to a recent volume by Gustave Ls 
Bon, 'on V Evolution de la Mattire, a work full of original and 
bold ideas. 



28 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



beyond the truth that matter is an excitant of 
our nervous system, and is only known in con- 
nection with the perception we have of this 
last. 

If we open a work on physics or physiology we 
shall note with astonishment how the above con- 
siderations are misunderstood. Observers of 
nature who seek, and rightly, to give the maxi- 
mum of exactness to their observations, show 
that they are obsessed by one constant prejudice : 
they mistrust sensation. 

A great part of their efforts consists, by what 
they say, in reducing the role of sensation to 
its fitting part in science; and the invention of 
mechanical aids to observation is constantly held 
up as a means of remedying the inperfection of 
our senses. In physics the thermometer replaces 
the sensation of heat that our skin — our hand, for 
example — experiences by the measurable elevation 
of a column of mercury, and the scale-pan of a 
precise balance takes the place of the vague sensa- 
tion of trifling weights ; in physiology a registering 
apparatus replaces the sensation of the pulse 
which the doctor feels with the end of his fore- 
finger by a line on paper traced with indelible 
ink, of which the duration and the intensity, as 
well as the varied combinations of these two 
elements, can be measured line by line. 

Learned men who pride themselves on their 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 29 

philosophical attainments vaunt in very eloquent 
words the superiority of the physical instrument 
over mere sensation. Evidently, however, the 
earnestness of this eulogy leads them astray. The 
most perfect registering apparatus must, in tho 
long-run, after its most scientific operations, 
address itself to our senses and produce in us 
some small sensation. The reading of the height 
reached by the column of mercury in a ther- 
mometer when heated is accomplished by a 
visual sensation, and it is by the sight that the 
movements of the balance are controlled, and that 
the traces of the sphygmograph are analysed. 
We may readily admit to physicists and physiolo- 
gists all the advantages of these apparatus. Thi3 
is not the question. It simply proves that there 
are sensations and sensations, and that certain 
of these are better and more precise than others. 
The visual sensation of relation in space seems 
to be par excellence tho scientific sensation 
which it is sought to substitute for all the rest. 
But, after all, it is but a sensation. ^ 

Let us recognise that there is, in all this con- 
tempt on the part of physicists for sensation, only 
differences in language, and that a paraphrase 
would suffice to correct them without leaving 
any trace. Be it so. But something graver 
remains. When one is convinced that our 
knowledge of the outer world is limited to 



30 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

sensations, we can no longer understand how it 
is possible to give oneself up, as physicists do, 
to speculations upon the constitution of matter. 

Up to the present there have been three prin- 
cipal ways of explaining the physical phenomena 
of the universe. The first, the most abstract, 
and the furthest from reality, is above all verbal. 
It consists in the use of formulas in which the 
quality of the phenomena is replaced by their 
magnitude, in which this magnitude, ascertained 
by the most precise processes of measurement, 
becomes the object of abstract reasoning which 
allows its modifications to be foreseen under 
given experimental conditions. This is pure 
mathematics, a formal science depending upon 
logic. Another conception, less restricted than 
the above, and of fairly recent date, consists in 
treating all manifestations of nature as forms of 
energy. This term "energy" has a very vague 
content. At the most it expresses but two 
things: first, it is based on a faint recollection 
of muscular force, and it reminds one dimly of the 
sensation experienced when clenching the fists; 
and, secondly, it betrays a kind of very natural 
respect for the forces of nature which, in all the 
images man has made of them, constantly appear 
superior to his own. We may say "the energy 
of nature;" but we should never say, what 
would be experimentally correct^" the weakness 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 31 



of natura" The word " weakness " we reserve for 
ourselves. Apart from these undecided sugges- 
tions, the term energy is quite the proper term 
to designate phenomena, the intimate nature of 
which we do not seek to penetrate, but of which 
we only wish to ascertain the laws and measure 
the degrees. 

A third conception, more imaginative and 
bolder than the others, is the mechanical or 
kinetic theory. This last absolutely desires that 
we should represent to ourselves, that wo should 
imagine, how phenomena really take place ; and in 
seeking for the property of nature the most clearly 
perceived, the easiest to define and analyse, and 
the most apt to lend itself to measurement and 
calculation, it has chosen motion. Consequently 
all the properties of matter have been reduced to 
this one, and in spite of the apparent contradic- 
tion of our senses, it has been supposed that the 
most varied phenomena are produced, in the last 
resort, by the displacement of material particles. 
Thus, sound, light, heat, electricity, and even the 
nervous influx would be due to vibratory move- 
ments, varying only by their direction and their 
periods, and all nature is thus explained as a 
problem of animated geometry. This last theory, 
which has proved very fertile in explanations of 
the most delicate phenomena of sound and light, 
has so strongly* impressed many minds that it 



32 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

has led them to declare that the explanation of 
phenomena by the laws of mechanics alone has 
the character of a scientific explanation. Even 
recently, it seemed heresy to combat these ideas. 

Still more recently, however, a revulsion of 
opinion has taken place. Against the physicists, 
the mathematicians in particular have risen up, 
and taking their stand on science, have demon- 
strated that all the mechanisms invented have 
crowds of defects. First, in each particular case, 
there is such a complication that that which is 
defined is much more simple than the definition ; 
then there is such a waQt of unity that quite 
special mechanisms adapted to each phenomenal 
detail have to be imagined; and, lastly — most 
serious argument of all — so much comprehen- 
siveness and suppleness is employed, that no 
experimental law is found which cannot be under- 
stood mechanically, and no fact of observation 
which shows an error in the mechanical explana- 
tion — a sure proof that this mode of explanation 
has no meaning. 

My way of combating the mechanical theory 
starts from a totally different point of view. 
Psychology has every right to say a few words 
here, as upon the value of every kind of scientific 
theory; for it is acquainted with the nature of 
the mental needs of which these theories are the 
expression and which these theories seek to satisfy. 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 33 



It has not yet been sufficiently noticed that 
psychology does not allow itself to be confined, 
like physics or sociology, within the logical table 
of human knowledge, for it has, by a unique 
privilege, a right of supervision over the other 
sciences. We shall see that the psychological dis- 
cussion of mechanics has a wider range than that 
of the mathematicians. 

Since our cognition cannot go beyond sensa- 
tion, shall we first recall what meaning can be 
given to an explanation of the inmost nature of 
matter ? It can only be an artifice, a symbol, or 
a process convenient for classification in order to 
combine the very different qualities of things in 
one unifying synthesis — a process having nearly 
the same theoretical value as a memoria technica, 
which, by substituting letters for figures, ' helps 
us to retain the latter in our minds. This does 
not mean that figures are, in fact, letters, but it 
is a conventional substitution which has a prac- 
tical advantage. What memoria technica is to the 
ordinary memory, the theory of mechanics should 
be for our needed unification. 

Unfortunately, this is not so. The excuse we are 
trying to make for the mechanicians is illusory. 
There is no mistaking their ambition. Notwith- 
standing the prudence of some and the equivoca- 
tions in which others have rejoiced, they have 

drawn their definition in the absolute and not in 

c 




34 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

the relative. To take their conceptions literally, 
they have thought the movement of matter to be 
something existing outside our eye, our hands, 
and our sense ; in a word, something noumenal, as 
Eant would have said. The proof that this is 
their real idea, is that movement is presented to 
us as the true outer and explanatory cause of our 
sensations, the external excitement to our nerves. 
The most elementary works on physics are im- 
pregnated with this disconcerting conception. If 
we open a description of acoustics, we read that 
sound and noise are subjective states which have 
no reality outside our auditory apparatus; that 
they are sensations produced by an external cause, 
which is the vibratory movement of sonorous 
bodies — whence the conclusion that this 
vibratory movement is not itself a sensation. 
Or, shall we take another proof, still more con- 
vincing. This is the vibratory and silent move- 
ment which is invoked by physicists to explain 
the peculiarities of subjective sensation; so that 
the interferences, the pulsations of sound, and, in 
fine, the whole physiology of the ear, is treated 
as a problem in kinematics, and is explained 
by the composition of movements. 

What kind of reality do physicists then allow 
to the displacements of matter ? Where do they 
place them, since they recognise otherwise that 
the essence of matter is unknown to us ? Are we 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 35 

to suppose that, outside the world of noumena, 
outside the world of phenomena and sensations, 
there exists a third world, an intermediary be- 
tween the two former, the world of atoms and 
that of mechanics? 

A short examination will, moreover, suffice to 
show of what this mechanical model is formed 
which is presented to us as constituting the 
essence of matter. This can be nothing else 
than the sensations, since we are incapable of 
perceiving or imagining anything else. It is the 
sensations of sight, of touch, and even of the 
muscular sense. Motion is a fact seen by the eye, 
felt by the hand; it enters into us by the perception 
we have of the solid masses visible to the naked 
eye which exist in our field of observation, of their 
movements and their equilibrium and the displace- 
ment we ourselves effect with our bodies. Here is 
the sensory origin, very humble and very gross, of 
all the mechanics of the atoms. Here is the stuff 
of which our lofty conception is formed. Our 
mind can, it is true, by a work of purification, 
strip movement of most of its concrete qualities, 
separate it even from the perception of the object 
in motion, and make of it a something or other 
ideal and diagrammatic; but there will still 
remain a residuum of visual, tactile, and muscular 
sensations, and consequently it is still nothing else 
than a subjective state, bound to the structure of 



36 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



our organs. We are, for the rest, so wrapped up 
in sensations that none of our boldest conceptions 
can break through the circle. 

But it is not the notion of movement alone 
which proceeds from sensation. There is also 
that of exteriority, of space, of position, and, by 
opposition, that of external or psychological events. 
Without declaring it to be certain, I will remind 
you that it is infinitely probable that these notions 
are derived from our muscular experience. Free 
motion, arrested motion, the effort, the speed, and 
the direction of motion, such are the sensorial 
elements, which, in all probability, constitute the 
foundation of our ideas on space and its properties. 
And these are so many subjective notions which 
we have no right to treat as objects belonging to 
the outer world. 

What is more remarkable, also, is that even the 
ideas of object, of body, and of matter, are derived 
from visual and tactile sensations which have been 
illegitimately set up as entities. We have come, 
in fact, to consider matter as a being separate from 
sensations, superior to our sensations, distinct from 
the properties which enable us to know it, and 
binding together these properties, as it were, in a 
sheaf. Here again is a conception at the base of 
visualisation and muscularisation ; it consists in 
referring to the visual and other sensations, raised 
for the occasion to the dignity of external and per- 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 37 

manent causes, the other sensations which are con- 
sidered as the effects of the first named upon our 
organs of sense. 

It demands a great effort to clear our minds 
of these familiar conceptions which, it is plain* 
are nothing but naive realism. Tes ! the 
mechanical conception of the universe is no- 
thing but naive realism. 

To recapitulate our idea, and, to make it more 
plain by an illustration, here is a tuning-fork on 
the table before me. With a vigorous stroke of the 
bow I set it vibrating. The two prongs separate, 
oscillate rapidly, and a sound of a certain tone 
is heard. I connect this tuning-fork, by means 
of electric wires, with a D6prez recording ap- 
paratus which records the vibrations on the 
blackened surface of a revolving cylinder, and 
we can thus, by an examination of the trace made 
under our eyes, ascertain all the details of the 
movement which animates it. We see, parallel 
to each other, two different orders of phenomena ; 
the visual phenomena which show us that the 
tuning-fork is vibrating, and the auditory phe- 
nomena which convey to us the fact that it is 
making a sound. 

The physicist, asked for an explanation of all 
this, will answer: "It is the vibration of the 
tuning-fork which, transmitted by the air, is 
carried to our auditory apparatus, causes a vibra- 



38 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

tion in the tympanum, the movements of which 
are communicated to the small bones of the 
middle ear, thence (abridging details) to the ter- 
minations of the auditory nerve, and so produces 
in us the subjective sensation of sound." Well, in 
so saying, the physicist commits an error of in- 
terpretation ; outside our ears there exists some- 
thing we do not know which excites them; this 
something cannot be the vibratory movement of 
the tuning-fork, for this vibratory movement 
which we can see is likewise a subjective sensa- 
tion; it no more exists outside our sight than 
sound exists outside our ears. In any case, it is 
as absurd to explain a sensation of sound by one 
of sight, as a sensation of sight by one of sound. > 
One would be neither further from nor nearer 
to the truth if we answered that physicist as 
follows: "You give the preponderance to your 
eye ; I myself give it to my ear. This tuning-fork 
appears to you to vibrate. Wrong! This is how the 
thing occurs. This tuning-fork produces a sound 
which, by exciting our retina, gives us a sense of 
movement. This visual sensation of vibration is 
a purely subjective one, the external cause of the 
phenomenon is the sound. The outer world is 
a concert of sounds which rises in the immensity 
of space. Matter is noise and nothingness is 
silenca" 

This theory of the above experiment is not 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 39 



absurd; but, as a matter of fact, it is probable 
that no one would or could accept it, except 
verbally for amusement, as a challenge, or for the 
pleasure of talking metaphysics. The reason is 
that all our evolution, for causes which would take 
too long to detail, has established the hegemony of 
certain of our senses over the others. We have, 
above all, become visual and manual beings. It is 
the eye and the hand which give us the per- 
ceptions of the outer world of which we almost 
exclusively make use in our sciences ; and we are 
now almost incapable of representing to ourselves 
the foundation of phenomena otherwise than by 
means of these organs. Thus all the preceding 
experiment from the stroke of the bow to the final 
noise presents itself to us in visual terms, and 
further, these terms are not confined to a series 
of detached sensations. 

Visual sensation combines with the tactile and 
muscular sensations, and forms sensorial con- 
structions which succeed each other, continue, and 
arrange themselves logically : in lieu of sensations, 
there are objects and relations of space between 
these objects, and the actions which connect them, 
and the phenomena which pass from one to the 
other. All that is only sensation, if you will ; but 
merely as the agglutinated molecules of cement 
and of stone are a palace. 

Thus the whole series of visual events which 



40 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

compose our experiment with the timing-fork 
can be coherently explained. One understands 
that it is the movement of my hand equipped 
with the bow which is communicated to the 
tuning-fork. One understands that this move- 
ment passing into the fork has changed its form 
and rhythm, that the waves produced by the 
fork transmit themselves, by the oscillations of 
the air-molecules, to our tympanum, and so on. 
There is in all this series of experiments an 
admirable continuity which fully satisfies our 
minds. However much we might be convinced 
by the theoretical reasons given above, that we 
have quite as much right to represent the same 
series of events in an auditory form, we should 
be incapable of realising that form to ourselves. 

What would be the structure of the ear to any 
one who only knew it through the sense of hear- 
ing ? What would become of the tympanum, the 
small bones, the cochlea, and the terminations 
of the acoustic nerve, if it were only permitted 
to represent them in the language of sound ? 
It is very difficult to imagine. 

Since, however, we are theorising, let us not be 
stopped by a few difficulties of comprehension. 
Perhaps a little training might enable us to over- 
come them. Perhaps musicians, who discern as 
much reality in what one hears as in what one 
sees, would be more apt than other folk to under- 



THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 41 



stand the necessary transposition. Some of them, 
in their autobiographies, have made, by the way, 
very suggestive remarks on the importance they 
attribute to sound; and, moreover, the musical 
world, with its notes, its intervals, and its orches- 
tration, lives and develops in a manner totally 
independent of vibration. 

Perhaps we can here quote one or two examples 
which may give us a lead. To measure the 
length of a body instead of applying to it a yard- 
wand, one might listen to its sound; for the 
pitch of the sound given by two cords allows us 
to deduce their difference of length, and even the 
absolute length of each. The chemical composi- 
tion of a body might be noted by its electric 
resistance and the latter verified by the telephone ; 
that is to say, by the ear. Or, to take a more 
subtle example. We might make calculations with 
sounds of which we have studied the harmonic 
relations as we do nowadays with figures. A 
sum in rule of three might even be solved 
sonorously; for, given three sounds, the ear can 
find a fourth which should have the same rela- 
tion to the third as the second to the first. Every 
musical ear performs this operation easily; now, 
this fourth sound, what else is it but the fourth 
term in a rule of three ? And by taking into con- 
sideration the number of its vibrations a numeri- 
cal solution would be found to the problem. This 



42 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

novel form of calculating machine might serve 
to fix the price of woollen stuffs, to calculate 
brokerages and percentages, and the solution would 
be obtained without the aid of figures, without 
calculation, without visualisation, and by the ear 
alone. 

By following up this idea, also, we might go 
a little further. We might arrive at the con- 
viction that our present science is human, petty, 
and contingent ; that it is closely linked with the 
structure of our sensory organs ; that this struc- 
ture results from the evolution which fashioned 
these organs; that this evolution has been an 
accident of history ; that in the future it may be 
different ; and that, consequently, by the side or 
in the stead of our modern science, the work of 
our eyes and hands — and also of our words — there 
might have been constituted, there may still be 
constituted, sciences entirely and extraordinarily 
new — auditory, olfactory, and gustatory sciences, 
and even others derived from other kinds of 
sensations which we can neither foresee nor con- 
ceive because they are not, for the moment, 
differentiated in us. Outside the matter we know, 
a very special matter fashioned of vision and 
touch, there may exist other matter with totally 
different properties. 

But let us bring our dream to an end. The 
interest of our discussion does not lie in the 




THE MECHANICAL THEORIES OF MATTER 43 

hypothetical substitution of hearing or any other 
sense for sight. It lies in the complete suppres- 
sion of all explanation of the noumenal object 
in terms borrowed from the language of sensation. 
And that is our last word. We must, by setting 
aside the mechanical theory, free ourselves from 
a too narrow conception of the constitution of 
matter. And this liberation will be to us a great 
advantage which we shall soon reap. We shall 
avoid the error of believing that mechanics is the 
only real thing and that all that cannot be ex- 
plained by mechanics must be incomprehensible. 
We shall then gain more liberty of mind for 
understanding what the union of the soul with 
the body 1 may be. 

1 See note on p. 3. — Ed. 



1 



CHAPTER IV 



ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS, AND SUMMARY 

I have set forth the foregoing ideas by taking 
the road which to me seemed the best. On re- 
flection it has occurred to me that my manner 
of exposition and demonstration may be criticised 
much more than my conclusion. Now, as it is 
the conclusion alone which here is of importance, 
it is expedient not to make it responsible for the 
arguments by which I have supported it. 

These arguments resolve themselves into the 
attestation that between objects and our con- 
sciousness there exists an intermediary, our 
nervous system. We have even established that 
the existence of this intermediary is directly 
proved by observation, and from this I have 
concluded that we do not directly perceive the 
object itself but a tertium quid, which is our 
sensations. 

Several objections to this might be made. 
Let us enumerate them. 

i. It is not inconceivable that objects may act 
directly on our consciousness without taking the 
intermediary of our nervous system. Some authors, 

44 



ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS 45 



the spiritualists notably, believe in the possibility 
of disembodied souls, and they admit by implica- 
tion that these souls remain in communication 
with the terrestrial world, witness our actions, and 
hear our speech. Since they no longer have 
organs of sense, we must suppose that these 
wandering souls, if they exist, can directly per- 
ceive material objects. It is evident that such 
hypotheses have, up till now , nothing scientific in 
them, and that the demonstrations of them which 
are given raise a feeling of scepticism more than 
anything else. Nevertheless, we have not the 
right to exclude, by a priori argument, the possi- 
bility of this category of phenomena. 

2. Several German authors have maintained 
in recent years, that if the nervous system 
intervenes in the perception of external objects, 
it is a faithful intermediary which should not 
work any change on those physical actions which 
it gathers from outside to transmit to our con- 
sciousness. From this point of view colour would 
exist as colour, outside our eyes, sound would 
exist as sound, and in a general way there would 
not be, in matter, any mysterious property left, 
since we should perceive matter as it is. This is 
a very unexpected interpretation, by which men 
of science have come to acknowledge the correct- 
ness of the common belief; they rehabilitate an 
opinion which philosophers have till now turned 



46 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

to ridicule, under the name of naive realism. All 
which proves that the naivete of some may be the 
excessive refinement of others. 

To establish scientifically this opinion they 
batter down the theory of the specific energy of 
the nerves. I have recalled in a previous page 1 
of what this theory consists. I have shown that 
if, by mechanical or electrical means, our different 
sensory nerves are excited, notwithstanding the 
identity of the excitant, a different sensation is 
provoked in each case — light when the optic nerve 
is stimulated, sound when the acoustic, and so 
on. It is now answered to this argument based 
on fact that the nature of these excitants must 
be complex. It is not impossible, it is thought, 
that the electric force contains within itself both 
luminous and sonorous actions ; it is not impossible 
that a mechanical excitement should change the 
electric state of the nerve affected, and that, con- 
sequently, these subsidiary effects explain how one 
and the same agent may, according to the nerves 
employed, produce different effects. 

3. After the spiritualists and the experimen- 
talists, let us take the metaphysicians. Among 
them one has always met with the most varying 
specimens of opinions and with arguments for 
and against all possible theories. 

Thus it is, for example, with the external percep- 

1 See p. 22, sup.— Ed. 



ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS 47 



tion. Some have supposed it indirect, others, on 
the contrary, that it acts directly on the object. 
Those who uphold the direct theory are inspired 
by Berkeley, who asserts that the sensitive quali- 
ties of the body have no existence but in our own 
minds, and consist really in representative ideas. 
This doctrine is expressly based on this argument 
— that thought differs too much in nature from 
matter for one to be able to suppose any link 
between these two substances. In this particular, 
some authors often make an assertion without en- 
deavouring to prove it. They are satisfied with 
attesting, or even with supposing, that mind can 
have no consciousness of anything but its own 
states. Other philosophers, as I have said, 
maintain that " things which have a real exist- 
ence are the very things we perceive." It is 
Thomas Reid who has upheld, in some passages 
of his writings at all events, the theory of instan- 
taneous perception, or intuition. It has also been 
defended by Hamilton in a more explicit manner. 1 
It has been taken up again in recent years, by a 
profound and subtle philosopher, M. Bergson, who, 
unable to admit that the nervous system is a 
substratum of knowledge and serves us as a per- 
cipient, takes it to be solely a motor organ, and 
urges that the sensory parts of the system — that is 

1 See J. S. MILL'S Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philo- 
sophy, chap. z. p. 176, et tcq. 



48 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

to say, the centripetal, optic, acoustic, &c, nerves 
— do not call forth, when excited, any kind of 
sensation, their sole purpose being to convey dis- 
turbances from periphery to periphery, or, say, 
from external objects to the muscles of the body. 
This hypothesis, surely a little difficult to com- 
prehend, places, if I mistake not, the mind, as a 
power of perception and representation, within the 
interval comprised between the external object 
and the body, so that the mind is in direct contact 
with external objects and knows them as they are. 

It will bo noticed that these three interpreta- 
tions, the spiritualistic, the experimental, and the 
metaphysical, are in formal opposition with that 
which I have set forth earlier in these pages. 
They deny the supposition that the nervous system 
serves us as an intermediary with nature, and that 
it transforms nature before bringing it to our 
consciousness. And it might seem that by con- 
tradicting my fundamental proposition, these three 
new hypotheses must lead to a totally different 
conclusion. 

Now, this is not so at all. The conclusion I 
have enunciated remains entirely sound, notwith- 
standing this change in the starting point, and 
for the following reason. It is easy to see that 
we cannot represent to ourselves the inner struc- 
ture of matter by using all our sensations without 
distinction, because it is impossible to bring all 



ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS 49 

• 

these sensations within one single and identical 
synthetic construction : for this they are too dis- 
similar. Thus, we should try in vain to unite in 
any kind of scheme a movement of molecules and 
an odour; these elements are so heterogeneous 
that there is no way of joining them together and 
combining them. 

The physicists have more or less consciously 
perceived this, and, not being able to overcome 
by a frontal attack the difficulty created by the 
heterogeneity of our sensations, they have turned 
its flank. The ingenious artifice they have de- 
vised consists in retaining only some of these 
sensations, and in rejecting the remainder; the 
first being considered as really representing the 
essence of matter, and the latter as the effects of 
the former on our organs of sense ; the first being 
reputed to be true, we may say, and the second 
being reputed false — that is subjective, that is 
not representing the X of matter. 1 I have refuted 
this argument by showing that all our sensations 
without exception are subjective and equally false 
in regard to the X of matter, and that no one of 
them, consequently, has any claim to explain the 
others. 

Now, by a new interpretation, we are taught 
that all sensations are equally true, and that all 
faithfully represent the great X. If they be all 

1 See p. 18, *up. — Ed. 



50 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

equally true, it is absolutely the same as if they 
were all false; no one sensation can have any 
privilege over the others, none can be truer than 
the others, none can be capable of explaining 
the others, none can usurp to itself the sole 
right of representing the essence of matter; and 
we thus find ourselves, in this case, as in the 
preceding, in presence of the insurmountable 
difficulty of creating a synthesis with hetero- 
geneous elements. 

All that has been said above is summed up in 
the following points : — 

1. Of the external world, we only know our 
sensations. All the physical properties of matter 
resolve themselves for us into sensations, present, 
past, or possible. We may not say that it is by 
the intermediary, by the means of sensation, that 
we know these properties, for that would mean 
that the properties are distinct from the sensa- 
tions. Objects are to us in reality only aggregates 
of sensations. 

2. The sensations belong to the different organs 
of the senses — sight, hearing, touch, the muscular 
sense, &c. Whatever be the sense affected, one 
sensation has the same rights as the others, 
from the point of view of the cognition of exter- 
nal objects. It is impossible to distinguish them 
into subjective and objective, by giving to this 
distinction the meaning that certain sensations 



ANSWERS TO SOME OBJECTIONS 51 

represent objects as they are, while certain others 
simply represent our manner of feeling. This is 
an illegitimate distinction, since all sensations have 
the same physiological condition, the excitement 
of a sensory nerve, and result from the properties 
of this nerve when stimulated. 

3. Consequently, if is impossible for us to form 
a conception of matter in terms of movement, 
and to explain by the modalities of movement 
the properties of bodies ; for this theory amounts 
to giving to certain sensations, especially those 
of the muscular sense, the hegemony over the 
others. We cannot explain, we have not the 
right to explain, one sensation by another, and 
the mechanical theory of matter has simply the 
value of a symbol. 



BOOK II 

THE DEFINITION OF MIND 



CHAPTER I 



THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN COGNITION 1 AND ITS 
OBJECT 

After having thus studied matter and reduced it 
to sensations, we shall apply the same method of 
analysis to mind, and inquire whether mind pos- 
sesses any characteristic which allows it to be 
distinguished from matter. 

Before going any further, let me clear up an 
ambiguity. All the first part of this work has 
been devoted to the study of what is known to 
us in and by sensation; and I have taken upon 
myself, without advancing any kind of justifying 
reason, to call that which is known to us, by this 
method, by the name of matter, thus losing sight 
of the fact that matter only exists by contra- 
distinction and opposition to mind, and that if 
mind did not exist, neither would matter. I have 
thus appeared to prejudge the question to be 
resolved. 

The whole of this terminology must now be 

considered as having simply a conventional value, 

1 See note on p. 14, tup. — Ed. 
35 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



and must be set aside for the present. These are 
the precise terms in which this question presents 
itself to my mind. A part of the knowable con- 
sists in sensations. We must, therefore, without 
troubling to style this aggregate of sensations 
matter rather than mind, make an analysis of 
the phenomena known by the name of mind, and 
see whether they differ from the preceding ones. 
Let us, therefore, make an inventory of mind. 
By the process of enumeration, we find quoted as 
psychological phenomena, the sensations, the per- 
ceptions, the ideas, the recollections, the reason- 
ings, the emotions, the desires, the imaginations, and 
the acts of attention and of wilL These appear to 
be, at the first glance, the elements of mind ; but, 
on reflection, one perceives that these elements 
belong to two distinct categories, of which it is 
easy to recognise the duality, although, in fact 
and in reality, these two elements are constantly 
combined. The first of these elements may re- 
ceive the generic name of objects of cognition, 
or objects known, and the second that of acts of 
cognition. 

Here are a few examples of concrete facts, 
which only require a rapid analysis to make their 
double nature plain. In a sensation which we feel 
are two things: a particular state, or an object 
which one knows, and the act of knowing it, of 
feeling it, of taking cognisance of it; in other 




COGNITION AND ITS OBJECT 57 

words, every sensation comprises an impression 
and a cognition. In a recollection there is, in 
like manner, a certain image of the past and 
the fact consisting in the taking cognisance of 
this image. It is, in other terms, the distinc- 
tion between the intelligence and the object. 
Similarly, all reasoning has an object; there 
must be matter on which to reason, whether 
this matter be supplied by the facts or the 
ideas. Again, a desire, a volition, an act of 
reflection, has need of a point of applicatioa 
One does not will in the air, one wills some- 
thing; one does not reflect in the void, one 
reflects over a fact or over some difficulty. 

We may then provisionally distinguish in an 
inventory of the mind a something which is 
perceived, understood, desired, or willed, and, 
beyond that, the fact of perceiving, of under- 
standing, or desiring, or of willing. 

To illustrate this distinction by an example, 
I shall say that an analogous separation can be 
effected in an act of vision, by showing that the 
act of vision, which is a concrete operation, 
comprises two distinct elements: the object 
seen and the eye which sees. But this is, of 
course, only a rough comparison, of which we 
shall soon see the imperfections when we are 
further advanced in the study of the question. 

To this activity which exists and manifests 



58 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



itself in the facts of feeling, perceiving, &c, we 
can give a name in order to identify and re- 
cognise it: we will call it the consciousness 1 
(la conscience), and we will call object every- 
thing which is not the act of consciousness. 

After this preliminary distinction, to which we 
shall often refer, we will go over the principal 
manifestations of the mind, and we will first study 
the objects of cognition, reserving for another 
chapter the study of the acts of cognition — that is 
to say, of consciousness. We will thus examine 
successively sensation, idea, emotion, and will. 

It has been often maintained that the peculiar 
property of mind is to perceive sensations. It 
has also been said that thought — that is, the 
property of representing to one's self that which 
does not exist — distinguishes mind from matter. 
Lastly, it has not failed to be affirmed that one 
thing which the mind brings into the material 

1 The word " contcienoe " is one of those which has been 
used in the greatest number of different meanings. Let it be, 
at least, understood that I nse it here in an intellectual and not 
a moral sense. I do not attach to the conscience the idea of a 
moral approbation or disapprobation, of a duty, of a remorse. 
The best example to illustrate conscience has, perhaps, been 
formed by Ladd. It is the contrast between a person awake 
and sleeping a dreamless sleep. The first has consciousness of 
a number of things ; the latter has consciousness of nothing. 
Let me now add that we distinguish from consciousness that 
multitude of things of which one has consciousness of. Of 
these we make the object of consciousness. [Conteience has 
throughout been rendered " consciousness. " — Ed.] 




COGNITION AND ITS OBJECT 59 

world is its power of emotion; and moralists, 
choosing somewhat arbitrarily among certain 
emotions, have said that the mind is the creator 
of goodness. We will endeavour to analyse these 
different affirmations. 



CHAPTER II 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 

When making the analysis of matter we im- 
pliedly admitted two propositions: first, that 
sensation is the tertium quid which is inter- 
posed between the excitant of our sensory nerves 
and ourselves; secondly, that the aggregate of 
our sensations is all we can know of the 
outer world, so that it is correct to define this 
last as the collection of our present, past, and 
possible sensations. It is not claimed that the 
outer world is nothing else than this, but it is 
claimed with good reason that the outer world 
is nothing else to vs. 

It would be possible to draw from the above 
considerations a clear definition of sensation, and 
especially it would be possible to decide hence- 
forth from the foregoing whether sensation is a 
physical or a mental phenomenon, and whether 
it belongs to matter or to mind. This is the 
important point, the one which we now state, 
and which we will endeavour to resolve. To 
make the question clearer, we will begin it afresh, 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 61 



as if it were new, and as if the facts hitherto 
analysed did not already prejudge the solution. 
Let us begin by giving a definition of sensation 
from the point of view of experimental psychology. 

Sensation, then, is the phenomenon which is 
produced and which one experiences when an 
excitant has just acted on one of our organs of 
sense. This phenomenon is therefore composed 
of two parts: an action exercised from outside 
by some body or other on our nervous substance ; 
and, then, the fact of feeling this action. 

This fact of feeling, this state of consciousness, 
is necessary to constitute sensation ; when it does 
not exist, it is preferable to give the phenome- 
non another name, otherwise the fault is com- 
mitted of mixing up separate facts. Physiologists 
have, on this point, some faults of terminology 
with which to reproach themselves ; for they have 
employed the word sensibility with too little of 
the critical spirit. Sensibility, being capacity for 
sensation, presupposes, like sensation itself, con- 
sciousness. It has, therefore, been wrong, in 
physiology, to speak of the sensibility of the tissues 
and organs, which, like the vegetable tissues or 
the animal organs of vegetative life, properly 
speaking, feel nothing, but react ty rapid or slow 
movements to the excitements they are made to 
receive. Reaction, by a movement or any kind 
of modification, to an excitement, does not consti- 



62 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



tute a sensation unless consciousness is joined 
with it, and, consequently, it would be wiser to 
give unfelt excitements and reactions the name 
of excitability. 

The clearest examples of sensation are furnished 
by the study of man, and are taken from cases 
where we perceive an external object. The object 
produces upon us an action, and this action is 
felt; only, in such cases, the fact of sensation 
comprises but a very small part of the event. 
It only corresponds, by definition, to the actual 
action of the object. Analysis after analysis 
has shown that we constantly perceive far be- 
yond this actual action of objects. Our mind, as 
we say, outruns our senses. To our sensations, 
images come to attach themselves which result 
from sensations anteriorly felt in analogous cir- 
cumstances. These images produce in us an 
illusion, and we take them for sensations, so that 
we think we perceive something which is but a 
remembrance or an idea; the reason being that 
our mind cannot remain in action in the presence 
of a sensation, but unceasingly labours to throw 
light upon it, to sound it, and to arrive at its 
meaning, and consequently alters it by adding 
to it. This addition is so constant, so unavoid- 
able, that the existence of an isolated sensation 
which should be perceived without the attachment 
of images, without modification or interpretation, 



DEFINITION OP SENSATION 63 



is well-nigh unrealisable in the consciousness of 
an adult. It is a myth. 

Let us, however, imagine this isolation to be 
possible, and that we have before us a sensation 
free from any other element. What is this sensa- 
tion ? Does it belong to the domain of physical or 
of moral things? Is it a state of matter or of 
mind? 

I can neither doubt nor dispute that sensation is, 
in part, a psychological phenomenon, since I have 
admitted, by the very definition I have given of it, 
that sensation implies consciousness. We must, 
therefore, acknowledge those who define it as a 
state of consciousness to be right, but it would be 
more correct to call it the consciousness of a state, 
and it is with regard to the nature of this state 
that the question presents itself. It is only this 
state which we will now take into consideration. 
It is] understood that sensation contains both an 
impression and a cognition. Let us leave till 
later the study of the act of cognition, and deal 
with the impression. Is this impression now of 
a physical or a mental nature? Both the two 
opposing opinions have been upheld. In this 
there is nothing astonishing, for in metaphysics 
one finds the expression of every possible opinion. 
But a large, an immense majority of philosophers 
has declared in favour of the psychological nature 
of the impression. Without even making the 



64 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

above distinction between the impression and the 
act of cognition, it has been admitted that the 
entire sensation, taken en bloc, is a psychological 
phenomenon, a modification of our consciousness 
and a peculiar state of our minds. Descartes 
has even employed this very explicit formula : 
"The objects we perceive are within our under- 
standing." It is curious to see how little trouble 
authors take to demonstrate this opinion; they 
declare it to be self-evident, which is a convenient 
way of avoiding all proof John Stuart Mill has 
no hesitation in affirming that: "The mind, in 
perceiving external objects, can only take notice of 
its own conditions." And Renouvier expresses the 
same arbitrary assertion with greater obscurity 
when he writes : " The monad is constituted by this 
relation : the connection of the subject with the 
object within the subject." 1 In other words, it is 
laid down as an uncontrovertible principle that 
"the mental can only enter into direct relations 
with the mental." That is what may be called 
"the principle of Idealism." 

This principle seems to me very disputable, and 
it is to me an astonishing thing that the most 
resolute of sceptics — Hume, for example — should 
have accepted it without hesitation. I shall first 
enunciate my personal opinion, then make known 



1 Or. Renouvibh ct L. Prat, La NoitvdU Monadologic, p. 148. 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 65 

another which only differs from mine by a 
difference of words, and finally I will discuss 
a third opinion, which seems to me radically 
wrong. 

My personal opinion is that sensation is of a 
mixed nature. It is psychical in so far as it implies 
an act of consciousness, and physical otherwise. 
The impression on which the act of cognition 
operates, that impression which is directly pro- 
duced by the excitant of the nervous system, seems 
to me, without any doubt, to be of an entirely 
physical nature. This opinion, which I make mine 
own, has only been upheld by very few philosophers 
— Thomas Reid perhaps, and William Hamilton for 
certain ; but neither has perceived its deep-lying 
consequences. 

What are the arguments on which I rely ? They 
are of different orders, and are arguments of fact 
and arguments of logic. I shall first appeal to 
the natural conviction of those who have never 
ventured into metaphysics. So long as no 
endeavour has been made to demonstrate the 
contrary to them, they believe, with a natural 
and naive belief, that matter is that which is seen, 
touched and felt, and that, consequently, matter 
and our senses are confounded. They would be 
greatly astonished to be informed that when we 
appear to perceive the outer world, we simply per- 
ceive our ideas ; that when we take the train for 

E 



66 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



Lyons we enter into one state of consciousness in 
order to attain another state of consciousness. 

Now, the adherents of this natural and naive 
opinion have, as they say in the law, the right of 
possession (possession cCitat) ; they are not plain- 
tiffs but defendants; it is not for them to prove 
they are in the right, it has to be proved against 
them that they are in the wrong. Until this 
proof is forthcoming they have a presumption in 
their favour. 

Are we here making use of the argument of 
common opinion of mankind, of which ancient 
philosophy made so evident an abuse ? Tes, and 
no. Yes, for we here adopt the general opinion. 
No, for we only adopt it till the contrary be proved. 
But who can exhibit this proof to the contrary? 
On a close examination of the question, it will be 
perceived that sensation, taken as an object of cog- 
nition, becomes confused with the properties of 
physical nature, and is identified with them, both 
by its mode of apparition and by its content. By 
its mode of apparition, sensation holds itself out 
as independent of us, for it is at every instant an 
unexpected revelation, a source of frosh cogni- 
tions, and it offers a development which takes 
place without and in spite of our will ; while its 
laws of co-existence and of succession declare to 
us the order and march of the material universe. 
Besides, by its content, sensation is confounded 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 67 



with matter. When a philosopher seeks to repre- 
sent to himself the properties of a material object, 
—of a brain, for example — in order to contrast 
them with the properties of a psychical activity, it 
is the properties of sensation that he describes as 
material ; and, in fact, it is by sensation, and sensa- 
tion alone, that we know these properties. Sensa- 
tion is so little distinct from them that it is an error 
to consider it as a means, a process, an instrument 
for the knowledge of matter. All that we know 
of matter is not known in or by sensation, but 
constitutes sensation itself; it is not by the aid of 
sensation that we know colour ; colour is a sensa- 
tion, and the same may be said of form, resistance, 
and the whole series of the properties of matter. 
They are only our sensations clothed with external 
bodies. It is therefore absolutely legitimate to 
consider a part of our sensations, the object part, 
as being of physical nature. This is the opinion 
to which I adhere. 

We come to the second opinion we have for- 
mulated. It is, in appearance at least, very 
different from the first. Its supporters agree that 
the entire sensation, taken en bloc and unana- 
lysed, is to be termed a psychological pheno- 
menon. In this case, the act of consciousness, 
included in the sensation, continues to represent 
a psychical element. They suppose, besides, that 
the object on which this act operates is psychical ; 



68 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

and finally, they suppose that this object or this 
impression was provoked in us by a physical 
reality which is kept in concealment, which 
we do not perceive, and which remains un- 
knowable. 

This opinion is nowise absurd in itself: but 
let us examine its consequences. If we admit 
this thesis, that sensations are manifestations of 
mind which, although provoked by material 
causes, are of a purely mental nature, we are 
forced to the conclusion that we know none of 
the properties of material bodies, since we do not 
enter into relations with these bodies. The object 
we apprehend by perception is, according to this 
hypothesis, solely mental. To draw therefrom any 
notion on material objects, it would have to be 
supposed that, by some mysterious action, the 
mental which we know resembles the physical 
which we do not know, that it retains the reflec- 
tion of it, or even that it allows its colour and 
form to pass, like a transparent pellicle applied 
on the contour of bodies. Here are hypotheses 
very odd in their realism. Unless we accept 
them, how is it comprehensible that we can know 
anything whatever of physical nature ? We 
should be forced to acknowledge, following the 
example of several philsophers, that the percep- 
tion of the physical is an illusion. 

As a compensation, that which this system 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 69 



takes from matter it attributes to mind, which 
turns our familiar conceptions upside down. The 
qualities of sensation detached from matter will, 
when applied to mind, change its physiognomy. 
There are sensations of extent, weight, space, and 
form. If these sensations are turned into psychical 
events, we shall have to grant to these events, to 
these manifestations of the mind, the properties of 
extent, of weight, of form. We shall have to say 
that mind is a resisting thing, and that it has 
colour. 

It may be said that this fantasy of language is 
not very serious. So be it. But then what remains 
of the dualism of mind and matter ? It is at least 
singularly compromised. We may continue to 
suppose that matter exists, and even that it is 
matter which provokes in our mind those events 
which we call our sensations ; but we cannot know 
if by its nature, its essence, this matter differs from 
that of mind, since we shall be ignorant of all its 
properties. Our ignorance on this point will be so 
complete that we shall not even be able to know 
whether any state which we call mental may not 
be physical. The distinction between physical 
and mental will have lost its raison d'&re, since 
the existence of the physical is necessary to give 
a meaning to the existence of the mental. We are 
brought, whether we like it or not, to an experi- 
mental monism, which is neither psychical nor 



7o THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

physical; panpsychism and panmaterialism will 
have the same meaning. 1 

But this monism can be only transitory, for it 
is more in the words than in the thing itself. It 
is brought about by the terminology adopted, 
by the resolution to call mental all the phe- 
nomena that it is possible to know. Luckily, 
our speculations are not at the mercy of such 
trifling details as the details of language. What- 
ever names may be given to this or that, it will 
remain none the less true that nature will con- 
tinue to present to us a contrast between phe- 
nomena which are flints, pieces of iron, clods of 
earth, brains — and some other phenomena which 
we call states of consciousness. Whatever be 
the value of this dualism, it will have to be dis- 
cussed even in the hypothesis of panpsychism. 2 
As for myself, I shall also continue to make a 
distinction between what I have called objects of 
cognition and acts of cognition, because this is 
the most general distinction that can be traced 
in the immense field of our cognitions. There 
is no other which succeeds, to the same degree, 
in dividing this field into two, moreover, this 
distinction is derived directly from observation, 

1 An American author, Morton Prince, lately remarked this : 
Philotophical Review, July 1904, p. 450. 

9 This Flournoy recently has shown very wittily. See in 
Arch, de PtychoL, Nov. 1904, his article on Panpsyohism. 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 71 

and does not depend for its validity on the 
physical or mental nature of the objects. Here 
is, then, a duality, and this duality, even when 
it does not bear the names physical and moral, 
should necessarily play the same part, since it 
corresponds to the same distinction of fact. 

In the end, nothing will be changed, and this 
second opinion must gradually merge into the 
one first stated by me, and of which I take the 
responsibility. We may, therefore, put it out of 
consideration. 

I have mentioned a third opinion, stating that 
it appeared to me to be radically false. Out- 
wardly it is the same as the last; looked at 
superficially it seems even confused with it ; but, 
in reality it is of a totally different nature. It 
supposes that sensation is an entirely psycho- 
logical phenomenon. Then, having laid down this 
thesis, it undertakes to demonstrate it by assert- 
ing that sensation differs from the physical fact, 
which amounts to supposing that we cannot know 
anything but sensations, and that physical facts 
are known to us directly and by another channel. 
This is where the contradiction comes in. It is so 
apparent that 6ne wonders how it has been over- 
looked by so many excellent minds. In order 
to remove it, it will be sufficient to recollect that 
we do not know anything other than sensations ; 
it is therefore impossible to make any distinction 



72 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

between the physical object and the object of cog- 
nition contained in every sensation. The line of 
demarcation between the physical and the moral 
cannot pass this way, since it would separate 
facta which are identical. 

We can, therefore, only deplore the error of 
all those who, to express the difference between 
mind and matter, have sought a contrast between 
sensation and physical facts. Physiologists, with 
hardly an exception, have fallen into this error ; 
when contemplating in imagination the material 
working of the brain, they have thought that 
between the movement of cerebral matter and 
sensation there was a gulf fixed. The comparison, 
to have been correct, required to be presented in 
quite another way. A parallel, for instance, should 
have been drawn between a certain cerebral move- 
ment and the act of consciousness, and there should 
have been said : " The cerebral motion is the phy- 
sical phenomenon, the act of consciousness the 
psychical." But this distinction has not been 
made. It is sensation en bloc which is com- 
pared to the cerebral movement, as witness a few 
passages I will quote as a matter of curiosity, 
which are borrowed from philosophers and, espe- 
cially, from physiologists. 

While philosophers take as a principle of 
idealism, that the mental can only know the 
mental, physiologists take, as a like principle, 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 73 



the heterogeneity existing, or supposed to exist, 
between the nerve impression and the sensation. 
"However much we may follow the excitement 
through the whole length of the nerve/' writes 
Lotze, 1 " or cause it to change its form a thousand 
times and to metamorphose itself into more and 
more delicate and subtle movements, we shall 
never succeed in showing that a movement thus 
produced can, by its very nature, cease to exist 
as movement and be reborn in the shape of 
sensation. . . ." It will be seen that it is on 
the opposition between molecular movement and 
sensation, that Lotze insists. In like manner 
Ferrier: "But how is it that the molecular 
modifications in the cerebral cells coincide with 
the modifications of the consciousness; how, for 
instance, do luminous vibrations falling upon the 
retina excite the modification of consciousness 
called visual sensation t These are problems we 
cannot solve. We may succeed in determining the 
exact nature of the molecular changes which take 
place in the cerebral cells when a sensation is 
felt ; but this will not bring us an inch nearer to 
the explanation of the fundamental nature of 
sensation." Finally, Du Bois Reymond, in his 
famous discussion in 1880, on the seven enigmas 

1 Thii extract, together with the two subsequent, are borrowed 
from an excellent lecture by Floubnoy, on MHaphytiqut ct 
Physiologic. Georg: Geneva, 1 890. 



74 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

of the world, speaks somewhat as follows: "The 
astronomical knowledge of the encephalon, that 
is, the most intimate to which we can aspire, 
only reveals to us matter in motion. But no 
arrangement nor motion of material particles can 
act as a bridge by which we can cross over into 
the domain of intelligence. . . • What imaginable 
link is there between certain movements of certain 
molecules in my brain, on the one hand, and 
on the other hand primitive, undefinable, un- 
deniable facts such as: I have the sensation of 
softness, I smell the odour of a rose, I hear the 
sound of an organ, I see a red colour, &c. . . ." 

These three quotations show very conclusively 
that their authors thought they could establish 
the heterogeneity of the two phenomena by op- 
posing matter to sensation. It must be recognised 
that they have fallen into a singular error; for 
matter, whatever it may be, is for us nothing but 
sensation; matter in motion, I have often re- 
peated, is only a quite special kind of sensation ; 
the organic matter of the brain, with its whirling 
movements of atoms, is only sensation. Conse- 
quently, to oppose the molecular changes in the 
brain to the sensation of red, blue, green, or to an 
undefined sensation of any* sort, is not crossing a 
gulf, and bringing together things which cannot 
be compared, it is simply comparing one sensa- 
tion to another sensation. 



DEFINITION OF SENSATION 75 

There is evidently something equivocal in all 
this ; and I pointed this out when outlining and dis- 
cussing the different theories of matter. It consists 
in taking from among the whole body of sensations 
certain of them which are considered to be special, 
and which are then invested with the privilege of 
being more important than the rest and the causes 
of all the others. This is about as illegitimate 
as to choose among men a few individuals to 
whom is attributed the privilege of commanding 
others by divine right. These privileged sensa- 
tions which belong to the sight, the touch, and the 
muscular sense, and which are of large extent, are 
indeed extensive. They have been unduly consi- 
dered as objective and as representing matter be- 
cause they are better known and measurable, while 
the other sensations, the unextensive sensations of 
the other senses, are considered as subjective for 
the reasons that they are less known and less 
measurable: and they are therefore looked on 
as connected with our sensibility, our Ego, and 
are used to form the moral world. 

We cannot subscribe to this way of establishing 
the contrast between matter and thought, since it 
is simply a contrast between two categories of 
sensations, and I have already asserted that the 
partitioning - out of sensations into two groups 
having different objective values, is arbitrary. 



CHAPTER III 



DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 

Going on with our inventory, after sensations 
come images, ideas, and concepts; in fact, quite 
a collection of phenomena, which are generally 
considered as essentially psychological. 

So long as one does not carefully analyse the 
value of ideas, one remains under the impression 
that ideas form a world apart, which is sharply 
distinguished from the physical world, and behaves 
towards it as an antithesis. For is not conception 
the contrary of perception ? and is not the ideal in 
opposition to reality ? 

Thoughts have some characteristics of fancy, of 
freedom, even of unreality, which are wanting to the 
prosaicness of heavy material things. Thoughts 
sport with the relations of time and space ; they 
fly in a moment across the gulf between the most 
distant objects; they travel back up the course 
of time; they bring near to us events centuries 
away; they conceive objects which are unreal; 
they imagine combinations which upset all physical 
laws, and, further, these conceptions remain invi- 



DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 77 



sible to others as well as to ourselves. They are 
outside the grip of reality, and constitute a world 
which becomes, for any one with the smallest 
imagination, as great and as important as the 
world called real. One may call in evidence the 
poets, novelists, artists, and the dreamers of all 
kinds. When life becomes too hard for us, we fly 
to the ideal world, there to seek forgetfulness or 
compensation. 

It is, therefore, easy to understand, that it should 
have been proposed to carry into ideation the 
dichotomy between the physical and the moral. 
Many excellent authors have made the domain 
of the mind begin in the ideal. Matter is that 
which does not think. Descartes, in his Discovers 
de la Mdthode (4th part), remarking that he may 
pretend "not to have a body, and that there is 
no world or place in which he exists, but that he 
cannot pretend that he does not think," concludes 
by saying that the mind is " a substance, all whose 
essence or nature is merely to think, and which 
has no need of either place or any other material 
thing, in order to exist ; " in short, that " the soul 
is absolutely distinct from the body." 1 

1 Let me say, in passing, that this separation that Dsscabtbs 
thinks he can establish between perception and ideation, is only 
conceivable on condition that it be not too closely examined, 
and that no exact definition of ideation be given. If we remark, 
in fact, that all thought is a reproduction, in some degree, of a 
sensation, we arrive at this conclusion : that a thought operated 



78 THIS MIND AND THE BRAIN 

Let us, then, examine in what measure this 
separation between perception and ideation can 
be legitimately established. If we accept this 
separation, we must abandon the distinction I 
proposed between acts and objects of cognition, 
or, at least, admit that this distinction does not 
correspond to that between the physical and 
the moral, since thoughts, images, recollections, 
and even the most abstract conceptions, all con- 
stitute, in a certain sense, objects of cognition. 
They are phenomena which, when analysed, are 
clearly composed of two parts, an object and a 
cognition. Their logical composition is, indeed, 
that of an external perception, and there is in 
ideation exactly the same duality as in sensa- 
tion. Consequently, if we maintain the above 
distinction as a principle of classification for 
all knowable phenomena, we shall be obliged to 
assign the same position to ideas as to sensations. 

The principal difference we notice between 
sensation and idea is, it would seem, the character 
of unreality in the last named ; but this opposition 
has not the significance we imagine. Our mental 

by a sool distinct from the body would be a thought completely 
void and without object, it would be the thought of nothingness. 
It is not, therefore, conceivable. Consequently the criterion, 
already so dangerous, which Descartes constantly employs — to 
wit: that what we clearly conceive is true— cannot apply to 
thought, if we take the trouble to analyse it and to replace a 
purely verbal conception by intuition. 



DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 79 

vision only assumes this wholly special character 
of unreality under conditions in which it is unable 
' to harmonise with the real vision. Taine has 
well described the phases of the reduction of the 
image by sensation : it is at the moment when it 
receives the shock of an image which contradicts ' 
it, that the image appears as illusory. 1 Let us 
suppose that we are sitting down, dreaming and 
watching the passing by of our images. If, at 
this moment, a sudden noise calls us back to 
reality, the whole of our mental phantasmagoria 
disappears as if by the wave of a magic wand, and 
it is by thus vanishing that the image shows its 
falsity. It is false because it does not accord with 
the present reality. 

But, when we do not notice a disagreement 
between these two modes of cognition, both alike 
give us the impression of reality. If I evoke a 
reminiscence and dwell attentively on the details, 
I have the impression that I am in face of the 
reality itself. " I feel as if I were there still," is 
a common saying; and, among the recollections 
I evoke, there are some which give me the same 

1 I somewhat regret that Taine fell into the common-place 
idea of the opposition of the brain and thought ; he took up 
again this old idea without endeavouring to analyse it, and 
only made it his own by the ornamentation of his style. And 
as his was a mind of powerful systematisation, the error which 
he committed led him into much wider consequences than the 
error of a more common mind would have done. 



80 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

certitude as the perception of the moment. 
Certain witnesses would write their depositions 
with their blood. One does not see this every 
day ; but still one does see it. 

Further, there are thousands of circumstances 
where the ideation is neither in conflict with the 
perception nor isolated from it, but in logical 
continuity with it. This continuity must even 
be considered as the normal condition. We 
think in the direction of that which we perceive. 
The image seems to prepare the adaptation of 
the individual to his surroundings ; it creates the 
foresight, the preparation of the means, and, in 
a word, everything which constitutes for us a 
final cause. Now, it is very necessary that the 
image appear real to be usefully the substitute 
of the sensation past or to come. 

Let us establish one thing more. Acting as 
a substitute, the image not only appears as real 
as the sensation, it appears to be of the same 
nature; and the proof is that they are con- 
founded one with the other, and that those who 
are not warned of the fact take one for the other. 
Every time a body is perceived, as I previously 
explained, there are images which affix themselves 
to the sensation unnoticed. We think we perceive 
when we are really remembering or imagining. 
This addition of the image to the sensation is not 
a petty and insignificant accessory ; it forms the 



DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 81 



major part, perhaps nine-tenths, of perception. 
Hence arise the illusions of the senses, which are 
the result, not of sensations but of ideas. From 
this also comes the difficulty of knowing exactly 
what, under certain circumstances, is observation 
or perception, where the fact perceived ends, and 
where conjecture begins. Once acquainted with 
all these possibilities of errors, how can we sup- 
pose a radical separation between the sensation 
and the image ? 

Examined more closely, images appear to us to 
be divisible into as many kinds as sensations: 
visual images correspond to visual sensations, 
tactile to tactile, and so on with all the senses. 

That which we experience in the form of 
sensation, we can experience over again in the 
form of image, and the repetition, generally weaker 
in intensity and poorer in details, may, under 
certain favourable circumstances, acquire an ex- 
ceptional intensity, and even equal reality: as 
is shown by hallucinations. Here, certainly, 
are very sound reasons for acknowledging that 
the images which are at the bottom of our 
thoughts, and form the object of them, are the 
repetition, the modification, the transposition, the 
analysis or the synthesis of sensations experienced 
in the past, and possessing, in consequence, all 
the characteristics of bodily states. I believe 

that there is neither more nor less spirituality 

p 



82 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



in the idea than in the sensation. That which 
forms its spirituality is the implied act of cogni- 
tion ; but its object is material 

I foresee a final objection : I shall be told that 
even when the unreality of the image is not the 
rule, and appears only under certain circumstances, 
it nevertheless exists. This is an important fact. 
It has been argued from the unreality of dreams 
and hallucinations in which we give a body to 
our ideas, that we do not in reality perceive 
external bodies, but simply psychical states and 
modifications of our souls. If our ideas consist — 
according to the hypothesis I uphold — in physical 
impressions which are felt, we shall be told that 
these particular impressions must participate in 
the nature of everything physical ; that they are 
real, and always real ; that they cannot be unreal, 
fictitious, and mendacious, and that, consequently, 
the fictitious character of ideation becomes in- 
explicable. 

Two words of answer are necessary to this 
curious argument, which is nothing less than an 
effort to define the mental by the unreal, and to 
suppose that an appearance cannot be physical. 
No doubt, we say, every image, fantastical as it 
may seem as signification, is real in a certain 
sense, since it is the perception of a physical 
impression; but this physical nature of images 
does not prevent our making a distinction between 



DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 83 

true and false images. To take an analogous 
example : we are given a sheet of proofs to correct, 
we delete certain redundant letters, and, although 
they are printed with the same type as the other 
letters, we have the right to say they are false. 
Again, in a musical air, we may hear a false note, 
though it is as real as the others, since it has 
been played. This distinction between reality and 
truth ought to be likewise applied to mental 
images. All are real, but some are false. They 
are false when they do not accord with the 
whole reality; they are true when they agree; 
and every image is partly false because, being an 
image, it does not wholly accord with the actual 
perceptions. It creates a belief in a perception 
which does not occur; and by developing these 
ideas we could easily demonstrate how many 
degrees of falsehood there are. 

Physiologically, we may very easily reconcile 
the falsity of the image with the physical character 
of the impression on which it is based. The 
image results from a partial cerebral excitement, 
which sensation results from an excitement which 
also acts upon the peripheral sensory nerves, and 
corresponds to an external object — an excitant 
which the image does not possess. This differ- 
ence explains how it is that the image, while 
resulting from a physical impression, may yet be 
in a great number of cases declared false — that 



84 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

is to say, may be recognised as in contradiction 
to the perceptions. 

To other minds, perhaps, metaphysical reasoning 
will be more satisfactory. For these, we propose to 
make a distinction between two notions, Existence 
or Reality, on the one hand, and Truth, on the 
other. 

Existence or Reality is that of which we have 
an immediate apprehension. This apprehension 
occurs in several ways. In perception, in the first 
place. I perceive the reality of my body, of a table, 
the sky, the earth, in proportion to my perception 
of them. They exist, for if they did not, I could 
not perceive them. Another way of understanding 
reality is conception or thought. However much 
I may represent a thing to myself as imaginary, it 
nevertheless exists in a certain manner, since I can 
represent it to myself. I therefore, in this case, 
say that it is real or it exists. It is of course 
understood, that in these definitions I am going 
against the ordinary acceptation of the terms ; I 
am taking the liberty of proposing new meanings. 
This reality is, then, perceived in one case and con- 
ceived in the other. Perceptibility or conceiv- 
ability are, then, the two forms which reality may 
assume. But reality is not synonymous with 
truth; notwithstanding the custom to the contrary, 
we may well introduce a difference between these 
two terms. Reality is that which is perceived or 




DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 85 

conceived; truth is that which accords with the 
whole of our knowledge. Reality is a function of 
the senses or of ideation; truth is a function of 
reasoning or of the reason. 

For cognition to be complete, it requires the aid 
of all these functions. And, in fact, what does 
conception by itself give ? It allows us to see if a 
thing is capable of representation. This is not a 
common-place thing, I will observe in passing ; for 
many things we name are not capable of repre- 
sentation, and there is often a criticism to be 
made; we think we are representing, and we tire 
not What is capable of representation exists as a 
representation, but is it true ? Some philosophers 
have imagined so, but they are mistaken ; what we 
succeed in conceiving is alone possible. 

Let us now take the Perceptible. Is what one 
perceives true? Tes, in most cases it is so in 
fact ; but an isolated perception may be false, and 
disturbed by illusions of all kinds. It is all very 
well to say, " I see, I touch." There is no certainty 
through the senses alone in many circumstances 
that the truth has been grasped. If I am shown 
the spirit of a person I know to be dead, I shall not, 
notwithstanding the testimony of my eyes, believe 
it to be true, for this apparition would upset all 
my system of cognitions. 

Truth is that which, being deemed conceivable, 
and being really perceived, has also the quality 



86 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



of finding its place, its relation, and its confirma- 
tion in the whole mass of cognitions previously 
acquired. 

These distinctions, 1 if developed, would readily 
demonstrate that the advantages of observation 
are not eclipsed by those of speculation ; and that 
those of speculation, in their turn, do not interfere 
with those of observation. But we have not time 
to develop these rules of logic ; it will be sufficient 
to point out their relation to the question of the 
reality of mental images. Here are my conclu- 
sions in two words. Physical phenomena and 
images are always real, since they are perceived or 
conceived; what is sometimes wanting to them, 
and makes them false, is that they do not accord 
with the rest of our cognitions. 2 

Thus, then, are all objections overruled, in my 
opinion at least. We can now consider the world 

1 I have just oome across them again in an ingenious note of 
C. L. HBBBICK : The Logical and Psychological Distinction bettoeen 
the True and the Real (Ptyoh. i&t>.,May 1904). I entirely agree 
with this author. But it is not he who exercised a suggestion over 
my mind ; it was M. BfiBGSON. See Matiere et Mimoire, p. 159. 

3 In order to remain brief, I have not thought fit to allude in 
the text to a question of metaphysics which closely depends 
on the one broached by me : the existence of an outer world. 
Philosophers who define sensation as a modality of our Ego are 
much embarrassed later in demonstrating the existence of an, 
outer world. Having first admitted that our perception of it 
is illusory, since, when we think we perceive this world, we have 
simply the feeling of the modalities of our Ego, they find them- 
selves powerless to demonstrate that this illusion corresponds to 



DEFINITION OF THE IMAGE 87 



of ideas as a physical world; but it is one of a 
peculiar nature, which is not, like the other, acces- 
sible to all, and is subject to its own laws, which 
are laws of association. By these very different 
characteristics, it separates itself so sharply from 
the outer world that all endeavour to bring the 
two together seems shocking ; and it is very easy 
to understand that many minds should wish to 
remain faithful to the conception that ideas form a 
mental or moral world. No metaphysical reason- 
ing could prevail against this sentiment, and we 
must give up the idea of destroying it. But we 
think we have shown that idea, like sensation, 
comprises at the same, time the physical and the 
mental. 

a truth, and invoke in despair, for the purpose of their demon- 
stration, instinct, hallucination, or some a priori law of the 
mind. The position we have taken in the discussion is far more 
simple. Since every sensation is a fragment of matter perceived 
by a mind, the aggregate of sensations constitutes the aggregate 
of matter. There is in this no deceptive appearance, and con- 
sequently no need to prove a reality distinct from appearances. 
As to the argument drawn from dreams and hallucinations 
which might be brought against this, I have shown how it is 
set aside by a distinction between perceptibility and truth. It 
is no longer a matter of perception, but of reasoning. In other 
words, all that we see, even in dreams, is real, but is not in its 
due place. 



CHAPTER IV 



DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS 

After sensations and images, we have to name 
among the phenomena of consciousness, the whole 
series of affective states — our pleasures and our 
pains, our joys and our griefs, our sentiments, our 
emotions, and our passions. It is universally ad- 
mitted that these states are of a mental nature, 
for several reasons, (i) We never objectivate 
them as we do our sensations, but we constantly 
consider them as indwelling or subjective states. 
This rule, however, allows an exception for the 
pleasure and the pain termed physical, which 
are often localised in particular parts of our 
bodies, although the position attributed to them 
is less precise than with indifferent sensations. 
(2) We do not alienate them as we do our 
indifferent sensations. The sensations of weight, 
of colour, and of form serve us for the construction 
of bodies which appear to us as perceived by 
us, but as being other than ourselves. On the 
contrary, we constantly and without hesitation 
refer our emotional states to our Ego. It is I 



DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS 89 



who suffer, we say, I who complain, I who hope. 
It is true that this attribution is not absolutely 
characteristic of mental phenomena, for it happens 
that we put a part of our Ego into material 
objects, such as our bodies, and even into objects 
separate from our bodies, and whose sole relation 
to us is that of a legal proprietorship. We must 
guard against the somewhat frequent error of 
identifying the Ego with the psychical. 

These two reasons sufficiently explain the 
tendency to see only psychological states in the 
emotional ones; and, in fact, those authors who 
have sought to oppose mind to matter have not 
failed to introduce emotion into their parallel as 
representing the essence of mind. On' this point 
I will recall the fine ironical image used by 
Tyndall, the illustrious English physicist, to show 
the abyss which separates thought from the 
molecular states of the brain. " Let us suppose/' 
he says, "that the sentiment love, for example, 
corresponds to a right-hand spiral movement of 
the molecules of the brain and the sentiment 
hatred to a left-hand spiral movement. We 
should then know that when we love, a move- 
ment is produced in one direction, and when we 
hate, in another. But the Why would remain 
without an answer." 

The question of knowing what place in our 
metaphysical theory we ought to secure for emo- 



90 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

tion seems difficult to resolve, and we even find 
some pleasure in leaving it in suspense, in order 
that it may be understood that a metaphysician 
is not compelled to explain everything. Besides, 
the difficulties which stop us here are peculiarly 
of a psychological order. They proceed from the 
fact that studies on the nature of the emotions 
are still very little advanced. The physical con- 
ditions of these states are pretty well known, 
and their psychical and social effects have been 
abundantly described; but very little is known 
as to what distinguishes an emotion from a 
thought. 

Two principal opinions may be upheld in 
the actual state of our acquaintance with the 
psychology of the feelings. When we endeavour 
to penetrate their essential and final nature, we 
have a choice between two contrary theories. 

The first and traditional one consists in seeing 
in emotion a phenomenon mi generis; this is 
very simple, and leaves nothing more to be said. 

The second bears the name of the intellectualist 
theory. It consists in expunging the characteristic 
of the affective states. We consider them as de- 
rivative forms of particular modes of cognition, 
and they are only " confused intelligence/' This 
intellectualist thesis is of early date; it will 
be found in Herbart, who, by-the-by, gave it a 
peculiar form, by oausing the play of images to 



DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS 91 



intervene in the formation of the feelings. How- 
ever, this particular point is of slight importance. 
The intellectualist theory is more vast than 
Herbartism; it exists in all doctrines in which 
the characteristic difference between thought and 
feeling is expunged and feeling is brought back 
to thought. One of the clearest means of so 
doing consists in only seeing in the feeling the 
fact of perceiving something. To perceive is, in 
fact, the property of intelligence; to reason, to 
imagine, to judge, to understand, is always, in a 
certain sense, to perceive. It has been imagined 
that emotion is nothing else than a perception of 
a certain kind, an intellectual act strictly com- 
parable to the contemplation of a landscape. 
Only, in the place of a landscape with placid 
features you must put a storm, a cataclysm of 
nature; and, instead of supposing this storm 
outside us, let it burst within us, let it reach 
us, not by the outer senses of sight and con- 
dition, but by the inner senses. What we then 
perceive will be an emotion. 

Such is the theory that two authors — W. James 
and Lange — happened to discover almost at the 
same time, Lange treating it as a physiologist 
and W. James as a philosopher. Their theory, 
at first sight, appears singular, like everything 
which runs counter to our mental habits. It 
lays down that the symptoms which we all till 



92 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

now have considered as the physiological conse- 
quence, the translation, and the distant effects 
of the emotions, constitute their essential base. 
These effects are : the expression of the physiog- 
nomy, the gesture, the cry, and the speech; or 
the reflex action on the circulation, the pallor 
or blushing, the heat mounting to the head, or 
the cold of the shiver which passes over the 
body. Or it is the heart, which hastens or 
slackens its beats, or makes them irregular, 
or enfeebles, or augments them. Or the respira- 
tion, which changes its rhythm, or increases, or 
is suspended. Or else it is the secretion of the 
saliva or of the sweat, which flows in abund- 
ance or dries up. Or the muscular force, which 
is increased or decays. Or the almost undefinable 
organic troubles revealed to us by the singing 
in the ears, constriction of the epigastrium, the 
jerks, the trembling, vertigo, or nausea — all this 
collection of organic troubles which comes more 
or less confusedly to our consciousness under the 
form of tactile, muscular, thermal, and other 
sensations. Until now this category of pheno- 
mena has been somewhat neglected, because we 
saw in it effects and consequences of which the 
role in emotion itself seemed slight, since, if they 
could have been suppressed, it was supposed that 
emotion would still remain. The new theory 
commences by changing the order of events. It 



DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS 



places the physical symptoms of the emotions 
at the very beginning, and considers them the 
direct effects of the external excitant, which is 
expressed by this elegant formula: "It used to 
be said, 'I perceive a danger; I am frightened, 
I tremble.' Now we must say, ' 1 tremble before 
a danger, first, and it is after having trembled 
that I am frightened.' " This is not a change in 
order only; it is something much more serious. 
The change is directed to the nature of emotion. 
It is considered to exist in the organic derange- 
ments indicated above. These derangements are 
the basis of emotion, its physical basis, and to be 
moved is to perceive them. Take away from the 
consciousness this physical reflex, and emotion 
ceases. It is no longer anything but an idea. 

This theory has at least the merit of ori- 
ginality. It also pleases one by its great clear- 
ness — an entirely intellectual clearness, we may 
say; for it renders emotion comprehensible by 
enunciating it in terms of cognition. It elimi- 
nates all difference which may exist between a 
perception and an emotion. Emotion is no longer 
anything but a certain kind of perception, the 
perception of the organic sensations. 

This reduction, if admitted, would much facili- 
tate the introduction of emotion into our system, 
which, being founded on the distinction between 
the consciousness and the object, is likewise an 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



intellectualist system. The definition of emotion, 
as it is taught by W. James, seems expressly 
made for us who are seeking to resolve all in- 
tellectual states into physical impressions accom- 
panied by consciousness. 

By the side of emotion we may place, as de- 
manding the same analytical study, the feeling 
of effort. We ought to inquire with effort, as 
has been done with emotion, what is the psycho- 
logical nature of this phenomenon; and in thp 
same way that there exists an intellectualist 
theory of the emotions, viz. that of James, who 
reduces all the history of the emotions to intelli- 
gence, so there exists an intellectualist theory of 
effort, which likewise tends to bring back all 
will to intelligence. It is again the same author, 
that true genius, W. James, who has attempted 
this reduction. I do not know whether he has taken 
into account the parallelism of the two theories* 
but it is nevertheless evident. Effort, that basis 
of activity, that state of consciousness which so 
many psychologists have described as something 
mi generis, becomes to James a phenomenon 
of perception. It is the perception of sensations 
proceeding from the muscles, the tendons, the 
articulations, the skin, and from all the organs 
directly or indirectly concerned in the execution 
of movement. To be conscious of an effort would 
then be nothing else than to receive all these 



DEFINITION OF THE EMOTIONS 95 

centripetal sensations; and what proves this is, 
that the consciousness of effort when most clearly 
manifested is accompanied by some muscular 
energy, some strong contraction, or some respi- 
ratory trouble, and yields if we render the 
respiration again regular and put the muscles 
back into repose. 

To my great regret I can state nothing very 
clear regarding these problems. The attempt to 
intellectualise all psychical problems is infinitely 
interesting, and leads to a fairly clear conception, 
by which everything is explained by a mechanism 
reflected in a mirror, which is the consciousness. 
But we remain perplexed, and we ask ourselves 
whether this clearness of perception is not some- 
what artificial, whether affectivity, emotivity, ten- 
dency, will, are really all reduced to perceptions, 
or whether they are not rather irreducible ele- 
ments which should be added to the conscious- 
ness. Does not, for instance, desire represent a 
complement of the consciousness ? Do not desire 
and consciousness together represent a something 
which does not belong to the physical domain 
and which forms the moral world? This ques- 
tion I leave unanswered. 



CHAPTER V 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS — THE RELATION 
SUBJECT-OBJECT 

After having separated from the consciousness 
that which it is not, let us try to define what 
it is. This and the two following chapters are 
devoted to this study. 

A theory has often been maintained with regard 
to the consciousness ; namely, that it supposes a 
relation between two terms — a subject and an 
object, and that it consists exactly in the feel- 
ing of this relation. By subject is understood 
the something that has consciousness ; the object 
is the something of which we are conscious. 
Every thought, we are told, implies subject and 
object, the representer and the represented, the 
sentiens and the sen&wm — the one active, the 
other passive, the active acting on the passive, 
the ego opposed to the non ego. 

This opinion is almost legitimised by current 
language. When speaking of our states of con- 
sciousness, we generally say, " I am conscious ; it 
is I who have consciousness/ 1 and we attribute 

96 




■ 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 97 

to our I, to our Ego, to our personality, the rdle 
of subject. But this is not a peremptory argu- 
ment in favour of the above opinion; it is only 
a presumption, and, closely examined, this pre- 
sumption seems very weak. 

Hitherto, when analysing the part of mind, 
we have employed non-committal terms : we have 
said that sensation implied consciousness, and not 
that sensation implied something which is con- 
scious. 1 The difference may appear too subtle, 
but it is not ; it consists in taking from conscious- 
ness the notion of a subject being conscious and 
replacing it by the very act of consciousness. 

My description applies very exactly, I think, to 
the facts. When we are engaged in a sensation, 
or when we perceive something, a phenomenon 
occurs which simply consists in having conscious- 
ness of a thing. If to this we add the idea of 
the subject which has consciousness, we distort 
the event. At the very moment when it is taking 
place, it is not so complicated ; we complicate it 
by adding to it the work of reflection. It is 

1 This second method of expression, which I consider in- 
exact, is constantly found in Descabtes. Different philosophers 
have explicitly admitted that every act of cognition implies a 
relation subject- object. This is one of the corner-stones of the 
neo-criticism of Renouvieb. He asserts that all representation 
is double-faced, and that what is known to us presents itself 
in the character of both representative and represented. He 
follows this up by describing separately the phenomena and laws 
of the representative and of the represented respectively. 

O 



98 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

reflection which constructs the notion of the 
subject, and it is this which afterwards introduces 
this construction into the states of consciousness ; 
in this way the state of consciousness, by receiv- 
ing this notion of subject, acquires a character 
of duality it did not previously possess. There 
are, in short, two separate acts of consciousness, 
and one is made the subject of the other. 
"Primitively," says Rabier, "there is neither re- 
presentative nor represented ; there are sensations, 
representations, facts of consciousness, and that 
is all. Nothing is more exact, in my opinion, 
than this view of Condillac's: — that primitively, 
the inanimate statue is entirely the sensation 
that it feels. To itself it is all odour and all 
savour; it is nothing more, and this sensation 
includes no duality for the consciousness. It is 
of an absolute simplicity." 

Two arguments may be advanced in favour of 
this opinion. The first is one of logic. We have 
divided all knowledge into two groups — objects 
of cognition, and acts of cognition. What is the 
subject of cognition ? Does it form a new group ? 
By no means; it forms part of the first group, 
of the object group ; for it is something to be 
known. 

Our second argument is one of fact. It consists 
in remembering that which in practice we under- 
stand by the subject of cognition ; or rather, meta- 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 99 

phorically we represent this subject to ourselves 
as an organ — the eye that sees or the hand 
that touches — and we represent to ourselves the 
relation subject-object in the shape of a material 
relation between two distinct bodies which are 
separated by an interval and between which some 
action is produced which unites them. Or else, 
confusing the subject and the Ego, which are never- 
theless two different notions, we place the Ego in 
the consciousness of the muscular effort struggling 
against something which resists. Or, finally and 
still more frequently, we represent the subject to 
ourselves by confusing it with our own person- 
ality ; it is a part of our biography, our name, our 
profession, our social status, our body, our past 
life foreshortened, our character, or, in a word, our 
civil personality, which becomes the subject of 
the relation subject-object. We artificially endow 
this personality with the faculty of having con- 
sciousness; and it results from this that the 
entity consciousness, so difficult to define and to 
imagine, profits by all this factitious addition 
and becomes a person, visible and even very 
large, in flesh and bone, distinct from the object 
of cognition, and capable of living a separate 
life. 

It is not difficult to explain that all this 
clearness in the representation of ideas is 
acquired by a falsification of the facts. So 



ioo THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

sensorial a representation of consciousness is very 
unfaithful; for our biography does not represent 
what we have called acts of consciousness, but a 
large slice of our past experience — that is to say, 
a synthesis of bygone sensations and images, a 
synthesis of objects of consciousness; therefore 
a complete confusion between the acts of con- 
sciousness and their objects. The formation of 
the personality seems to me to have, above all, 
a legal and social importance. 1 It is a peculiar 
grouping of states of consciousness imposed by 
our relations with other individuals. But, meta- 
physically, the subject thus understood is not 
distinguished from the object, and there is no- 
thing to add to our distinction between the object 
and the act of consciousness. 

Those who defend the existence of the subject 
point out that this subject properly constitutes 
the Ego, and that the distinction of the subject 
and the object corresponds to the distinction of 
the Ego and non-Ego, and furnishes the separa- 

1 The preceding ten lines in the text I wrote after reading a 
recent article of William Jambs, who wishes to show that the 
consciousness does not exist, but results simply from the relation 
or the opposition raised between one part of oar experience 
(the actual experience, for instance, in the example of the per- 
ception of an object) and another part, the remembrance of our 
person. But the argument of James goes too far ; he is right 
in contesting the relation subject-object, but not in contesting 
the existence of the consciousness (W. Jambs : 14 Does conscious- 
ness exist ? " in /. of Philosophy, <fc., Sept. 1904). 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 101 

tion between the physical and the moral so long 
sought. 

It is evidently very enticing to make of the Ego 
thus a primitive notion of the consciousness ; but 
this view of the Ego as opposed to the non-Ego in 
no way corresponds to that of the mental and the 
physical The notion of the Ego is much larger, 
much more extensible, than that of the mental ; 
it is as encroaching as human pride, it grasps in 
its conquering talons all that belongs to us ; for 
we do not, in life, make any great difference be- 
tween what is we and what is ours — an insult to 
our dog, our dwelling, or our work wounds us 
as much as an insult to ourselves. The posses- 
sive pronoun expresses both possession and pos- 
sessor. In fact, we consider our body as being 
ourselves. 

Here, then, are numbers of material things in- 
troducing themselves into the category of mental 
things. If we wished to expel them and to 
reduce the domain of the Ego to the domain 
of the mental, we could only do so if we already 
possessed the criterion of what is essentially 
mental. The notion of the Ego cannot there- 
fore supply us with this criterion. 

Another opinion consists in making of the subject 
a spiritual substance, of which the consciousness 
becomes a faculty. By substance is understood an 
entity which possesses the two following princi- 



io2 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



pal characteristics, unity and identity, this latter 
merging into unity, for it is nothing else but 
the persistence of unity through the course of 
time. Certain philosophers have asserted that 
through intuition we can all establish that we 
are a spiritual substance. I am compelled to 
reject this idea, because I think the expression 
spiritual mbstance has no meaning ; nothing but 
the sonorous value of six syllables. It has also 
been supposed, that there exists a corporeal sub- 
stance hidden under the sensations, in which are 
implanted the qualities of bodies, as the various 
organs of a flower are in its calyx. I will return 
later to this conception of a material substance. 
That of a spiritual substance cannot be defended, 
and the chief and fatal argument I urge against it 
is, that we cannot represent it to our minds, we 
cannot think it, and we cannot see in these words 
"spiritual substance" any intelligible idea; for 
that which is mental is limited to " that which is 
of the consciousness." So soon as we endeavour 
to go beyond the fact of having consciousness to 
imagine a particular state which must be mental, 
one of two things happen ; either we only grasp 
the void, or else we construct a material and 
persistent object in which we recognise psychical 
attributes. These are two conclusions which 
ought to be rejected. 



CHAPTER VI 



DEFINITION OP THE CONSCIOUSNESS — CATEGORIES 
OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

It has often been said that the role of intelli- 
gence consists in uniting or grasping the relations 
of things. An important question, therefore, to 
put, is, if we know whereof these relations con- 
sist, and what is the role of the mind in the 
establishment of a relation? 

It now and then happens to us to perceive 
an isolated object, without comparing it with 
any other, or endeavouring to find out whether 
it differs from or resembles another, or presents 
with any other a relation of cause to effect, or 
of sign to thing signified, or of co-existence in 
time and space. Thus, I may see a red colour, 
and occupy all the intellect at my disposal in the 
perception of this colour, seeing nothing but it, 
and thinking of nothing but it. Theoretically, 
this is not impossible to conceive, and, practically, 
I ask myself if these isolated and solitary acts of 
consciousness do not sometimes occur. 

It certainly seems to me that I have noticed 
in myself moments of intellectual tonelessness, 

XQ3 



104 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

when in the country, during the vacation, I look 
at the ground, or the grass, without thinking 
of anything— or at least, of anything but what 
I am looking at, and without comparing my 
sensation with anything. I do not think we 
should admit in principle, as do many philo- 
sophers, that "we take no cognisance save of 
relations." This is the principle of relativity , to 
which so much attention has been given. Taken 
in this narrow sense, it seems to me in no way 
imperative for our thoughts. We admit that it 
is very often applied, but without feeling obliged 
to admit that it is of perpetual and necessary 
application. 

These reserves once made, it remains to remark, 
that the objects we perceive very rarely present 
themselves in a state of perfect isolation. On the 
contrary, they are brought near to other objects 
by manifold relations of resemblance, of difference, 
or of connection in time or space; and, further, 
they are compared with the ideas which define 
them best. We do not have consciousness of an 
object, but of the relations existing between several 
objects. Relation is the new state produced by 
the fact that one perceives a plurality of objects, 
and perceives them in a group. 

Show me two colours in juxtaposition, and I 
do not see two colours only, but, in addition, 
their resemblance in colour or value. Show me 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 105 

two lines, and I do not see only their respective 
lengths but their difference in length. Show me 
two points marked on a white sheet of paper, and 
I do not see only the colour, form, and dimen- 
sion of the points, but their distance from each 
other. In our perceptions, as in our conceptions, 
we have perpetually to do with the relations 
between things. The more we reflect, the more 
we understand things, the more clearly we see 
their relations; the multiplication of relations is 
the measure of the depth of cognition. 1 

The nature of these relations is more difficult to 
ascertain than that of objects. It seems to be 
more subtle. When two sounds make themselves 
heard in succession, there is less difficulty in 
making the nature of these two sounds understood 
than the nature of the fact that one occurs before 
the other. It would appear that, in the perception 
of objects, our mind is passive and reduced to 
the state of reception, working like a registering 
machine or a sensitive surface, while in the per- 
ception of relations it assumes a more important 
part. 

Two principal theories have been advanced, of 
which one puts the relations in the things per- 

1 At the risk of being deemed too subtle, I ask whether we 
are conscious of a relation between objects, or whether that 
which occurs is not rather the perception of an object which 
has been modified in its nature by its relation with another 
object. 



106 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

ceived, and the other makes them a work of the 
mind. Let us begin with this last opinion. It 
consists in supposing that the relations are given 
to things by the mind itself. These relations 
have been termed categories. The question of 
categories plays an important part in the history 
of philosophy. Three great philosophers, Aris- 
totle, Kant, and Renouvier have drawn up a list, 
or, as it is called, a table of them, and this 
table is very long. To give a slight idea of it, I 
will quote a few examples, such as time, space, 
being, resemblance, difference, causality, becoming, 
finality, &c. 

By making the categories the peculiar possession 
of the mind, we attribute to these cognitions the 
essential characteristic of being anterior to sensa- 
tion, or, as it is also termed, of existing a priori : 
we are taught that not only are they not derived 
from experience, nor taught us by observation, but 
further that they are presupposed by all obser- 
vation, for they set up, in scholastic jargon, the 
conditions which make experience possible. They 
represent the personal contribution of the mind to 
the knowledge of nature, and, consequently, to 
admit them is to admit that the mind is not, in the 
presence of the world, reduced to the passive state 
of a tabula rasa, and that the faculties of the 
mind are not a transformation of sensation. Only 
these categories do not supplement sensation, they 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 107 



do not obviate it, nor allow it to be conjectured 
beforehand. They remain empty forms so long as 
they are not applied to experience ; they are the 
rules of cognition and not the objects of cognition, 
the means of knowing and not the things known ; 
they render knowledge possible, but do not of 
themselves constitute it. Experience through the 
senses still remains a necessary condition to the 
knowledge of the external world. It may be said 
that the senses give the matter of knowledge, and 
that the categories of the understanding give the 
form of it. Matter cannot exist without form, nor 
form without matter ; it is the union of the two 
which produces cognition. 

Such is the simplest idea that can be given of 
the Kantian theory of categories, or, if it is preferred 
to employ the term often used and much dis- 
cussed, such is the theory of the Kantian idealism. 
This theory, I will say frankly, hardly harmonises 
with the ideas I have set forth up to this point. 
To begin with, let us scrutinise the relation which 
can exist between the subject and the object. 
We have seen that the existence of the subject 
is hardly admissible, for it could only be an object 
in disguise. Cognition is composed in reality of 
an object and an act of consciousness. Now, how 
can we know if this act of consciousness, by adding 
itself to the object, modifies it and causes it to 
appear other than it is ? 



108 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

This appears to pie an insoluble question, and 
probably, even, a mctitious one. The idea that 
an object can be modified in its nature or in its 
aspect comes to my through the perception of 
bodies. We see Mat, by attacking a metal with 
acids, this metaljp modified, and that by heating 
a body its colotfr and form become changed ; or 
that by electrifying a thread it acquires new pro- 
perties ; or that when we place glasses before our 
eyes we change the visible aspect of objects; or 
that, if we have inflammation of the eyelids, light 
is painful, and so on. All these familiar experi- 
ments represent to us the varied changes that 
a body perceived can undergo; but it must be 
carefully remarked that in cases of this kind the 
alteration in the body is produced by the action of 
a second body, that the effect is due to an inter- 
course between two objects. On the contrary, 
when we take the Kantian hypothesis, that the 
consciousness modifies that which it perceives, 
we are attributing to the consciousness an action 
which has been observed in the case of the 
objects, and are thus transporting into one domain 
that which belongs to a different one; and we 
are falling into the very common error which 
consists in losing sight of the proper nature of 
the consciousness and making out of it an object. 

If we set aside this incorrect assimilation, there 
no longer remains any reason for refusing to 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 109 

admit that we perceive things as they are, and 
that the consciousness, by adding itself to objects, 
does not modify them. 

Phenomena and appearances do not, then, 
strictly speaking, exist. Till proof to the con- 
trary, we shall admit that everything we perceive 
is real, that we perceive things always as they 
are, or, in other words, that we always perceive 
noumena. 1 

1 This conclusion may seem contradictory to that which I 
enunciated when studying the constitution of matter. I then 
asserted that we only know onr sensations and not the excitants 
which produce them. Bat these sensations are matter ; they are 
matter modified by other matter, viz. oar nervous centres. 

We therefore take up very distinctly an opposite standpoint 
to the principle of relativity: in other terms, we reject the 
phenomenism of Berkeley. 

When we go into metaphysics we are continually astounded 
to see how different conceptions of things which have a classic 
value are independent of each other. In.general, phenomenism is 
opposed to substantialism, and it is supposed that those who do 
not accept the former doctrine must accept the latter, while, on 
the contrary, those who reject substantialism must be phenome- 
nists. We know that it is in this manner that Berkeley con- 
quered corporeal substantialism and taught phenomenism ; while 
Hume, more radical than he, went so far as to question the 
substantialism of mind. On reflection, it seems to me that, after 
having rejected phenomenism, we are in no way constrained to 
accept substance. By saying that we perceive things as they 
are, and not through a deluding veil, we do not force ourselves 
to acknowledge that we perceive the substance of bodies — that 
is to say, that something which should be hidden beneath its 
qualities and should be distinct from it. The distinction between 
the body and its qualities is a thing useful in practice, but it 
answers to no perception or observation. The body is only a 
group, a sheaf of qualities. If the qualities seem unable to exist 



no 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



After having examined the relations of the 
consciousness with its objects, let us see what 
concerns the perception, by the consciousness, of 
the relations existing between these objects them- 
selves. The question is to ascertain whether the a 
prioriste are right in admitting that the estab- 
lishment of these relations is the work of the 
consciousness. The role of synthetic power that 
is thus attributed to consciousness is difficult to 
conceive unless we alter the definition of con- 
sciousness to fit the case. In accordance with the 
definition we have given and the idea we have of 

of themselves and to require a subject, this ii only a grammatical 
difficulty, which is due to the fact that, while calling certain 
sensations qualities, we suppose a subject to be necessary. On 
the other hand, the representation which we make to ourselves 
of a material substance and its role as the support of the qualities, 
is a very naive and mechanical representation, thanks to which 
certain sensations become the supports of other and less impor- 
tant sensations. It would suffice to insist on the detail of this 
representation and on its origin to show its artificial character. 
The notion we have of the stability of bodies and of the per- 
sistence of their identity, notwithstanding certain superficial 
changes, is the reason for which I thought proper to attribute a 
substance to them, that is to say, an invariable element. But 
we can attain the same end without this useless hypothesis ; we 
have only to remark that the identity of the object lies in the 
aggregate of its properties, including the name it bears. If the 
majority of its properties, especially of those most important to 
us, subsists without alteration, or if this alteration, though of 
very great extent, takes place insensibly and by slow degrees, 
we decide that the object remains the same. We have no need 
for that purpose to give it a substanoe one and indestructible. 
Thus we are neither adherents of phenomenism, nor of substan- 
tialism. 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS in 



it, the consciousness makes us acquainted with 
what a thing is, but it adds nothing to it. It 
is not a power which begets objects, nor is it a 
power which begets relations. 

Let us carefully note the consequence at which 
we should arrive, if, while admitting, on the one 
hand, that our consciousness lights up and reveals 
the objects without creating them, we were, on 
the other hand, to admit that it makes up for this 
passivity by creating relations between objects. 
We dare not go so far as to say that this 
creation of relations is arbitrary and corresponds 
in no way to reality ; or that, when we judge two 
neighbouring or similar objects, the relations of 
contiguity and resemblance are pure inventions 
of our consciousness, and that these objects are 
really neither contiguous nor similar. 

It must therefore be supposed that the relation 
is already, in some manner, attracted into the 
objects ; it must be admitted that our intelligence 
does not apply its categories haphazard or from 
the caprice of the moment ; and it must be 
admitted that it is led to apply them because 
it has perceived in the objects themselves a sign 
and a reason which are an invitation to this 
application, and its justification. On this hypo- 
thesis, therefore, contiguity and resemblance must 
exist in the things themselves, and must be 
perceived; for without this we should run the 



ii2 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

risk of finding similar that which is different, 
and contiguous that which has no relation of 
time or space. Whence it results, evidently, 
that our consciousness cannot create the con- 
nection completely, and then we are greatly 
tempted to conclude that it only possesses the 
faculty of perceiving it when it exists in the 
objects. 1 

According to this conception, the role of the 
consciousness in the perception of a connection 
is that of a witness, as in the perception of objects. 
The consciousness does not create, but it verifies. 
Resemblance is a physical property of objects, 
like colour ; and contiguity is a physical property 
of objects, like form. The connections between 
the objects form part of the group object and not 
of the group consciousness, and they are just as 
independent of consciousness as are the objects 
themselves. 

Against this conclusion we must anticipate 
several objections. One of them will probably 
consist in accentuating the difference existing 
between the object and the connection from the 
dynamical point of view. That the object may be 
passively contemplated by the consciousness can 
be understood, it will be said ; but the relation is 
not only an object of perception — it is, further, 

1 I borrow from Rabieb this argument, which has thoroughly 
convinced me (see Ptyehologie, p. 281). 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 113 

a principle of action, a power of suggestion, and 
an agent of change. 

It might, then, be supposed that the conscious- 
ness here finds a compensation for the role that 
has been withdrawn from it. If it is not the thing 
that creates the relation, it will be said, at least 
it is that which creates its efficacity of suggestion. 
Many psychologists have supposed that a relation 
has the power of evocation only when it has been 
perceived. The perception of resemblance pre- 
cedes the action of resemblance. It is conse- 
quently the consciousness which assembles the 
ideas and gives them birth by perceiving their 
relations. 

This error, for it is one, has long been wide- 
spread — indeed, it still persists. 1 We have, how- 
ever, no difficulty in understanding that the 
perception of a resemblance between two terms 
supposes them to be known; so long as only 
one of the terms is present to the consciousness, 
this perception does not exist; it cannot there- 
fore possess the property of bringing to light the 
second term. Suggestion is therefore distinct from 
recognition ; it is when suggestion has acted, when 
the resemblance in fact has brought the two 

1 Pilon is the psychologist who has the most forcibly de- 
monstrated that resemblance acts before being perceived. I 
refer the readers to my Psychologie du RaisormemerU, where I have 
set forth this little problem in detail. 

H 



114 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



terms together, that the consciousness, taking 
cognisance of the work accomplished, verifies 
the existence of a resemblance, and that this 
resemblance explains the suggestion. 

Second objection : we are told that the relations 
between the objects — that is, the principal cate- 
gories — must be of a mental nature, because they 
are a priori. That they are a priori means 
that they are at once anterior and superior to 
the experience. Let us see what this argument 
is worth. 

It appears that it is somewhat misused. With 
regard to many of the categories, we are content 
to lay down the necessity of an abstract idea 
in order to explain the comprehension of a con- 
crete one. It is said, for example: how can it 
be perceived that two sensations are successive, 
if we do not already possess the idea of time? 
The argument is not very convincing, because, 
for every kind of concrete perception it is possible 
to establish an abstract category. 

It might be said of colour that it is impossible 
to perceive it unless it is known beforehand what 
colour is; and so on for a heap of other things. 
A more serious argument consists in saying that 
relations are a priori because they have a char- 
acter of universality and of necessity which is not 
explained by experience, this last being always 
contingent and peculiar. But it is not necessary 



\ 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 115 

that a function should be mental for it to be 
a priori. The identification of the a priori with 
the mental is entirely gratuitous. We should here 
draw a distinction between the two senses of the 
a priori: anteriority and superiority. 

A simple physical mechanism may be a priori, 
in the sense of anteriority. A house is a priori, 
in regard to the lodgers it receives ; this book is 
a priori, in regard to its future readers. There 
is no difficulty in imagining the structure of our 
nervous system to be a priori, in regard to the 
excitements which are propagated in it. A nerve 
cell is formed, with its protoplasm, its nucleus 
and its nucleoli before being irritated; its pro- 
perties precede its functions. If it be possible to 
admit that as a consequence of ancestral experi- 
ences the function has created the organ, the 
latter is now formed, and this it is which in its 
turn becomes anterior to the functioa The notion 
of a priori has therefore nothing in it which is 
repugnant to physical nature. 

Let us now take the a priori in the sense of 
superiority. Certain judgments of ours are, we 
are told, universal and necessary, and through this 
double character go beyond the evidence of ex- 
perience. This is an exact fact which deserves to 
be elplained, but it is not indispensable to explain 
it by allowing to the consciousness a source of 
special cognitions. The English school of philo- 



n6 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

sophy have already attacked this problem in 
connection with the origin of axioms. The 
principle of their explanation lies in the virtue 
of what they have termed " inseparable associa- 
tion." They have supposed that when an associa- 
tion is often repeated it creates a habit of thought 
against which no further strife is possible. The 
mechanism of association itself should then add 
a special virtue to the contingency of facts. A 
hundred repetitions of related facts, for example, 
would give rise to so firm an association, that no 
further repetition would increase it. 

I consider this explanation a very sound one in 
principle. It is right to put into association some- 
thing more than into experience. I would only 
suggest a slight correction in detail It is not 
the association forged by repetition which has 
this virtue of conveying the idea of necessity and 
universality, it is simply the uncontradicted asso- 
ciation. It has been objected, in fact, and with 
reason, to the solution of Mill, that it insists 
on a long duration of experience, while axioms 
appear to be of an irresistible and universal 
truthfulness the moment they are conceived. 
And this is quite just. I should prefer to lay 
down as a law that every representation appears 
true, and that every link appears necessary and 
universal as soon as it is formed. This is its 
character from the first. It preserves it so long 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 117 

as no contradiction in fact, in reasoning, or in 
idea, comes to destroy it. 1 

What seems to stand out most clearly after all 
these explanations is the role which we ought to 
attribute to the consciousness. Two rival theories 
have been maintained: that of the mirror-con- 
sciousness and that of the focus -consciousness. 
It would seem — I merely say it would seem — 
that the first of these best harmonises with the 
preceding facts. For what seems most probable 
is, that the consciousness illuminates and reveals 
but does not act. The theory of the focus-con- 
sciousness adapts itself less to the mechanism of 
the association of ideas. 

From this we come quite naturally to see in 
the intelligence only an inactive consciousness ; at 
one moment it apprehends an object, and it is a 
perception or an idea ; at another time it perceives 
a connection, and it is a judgment ; at yet another, 
it perceives connections between connections, and 
it is an act of reason. But however subtle the 
object it contemplates may become, it does not 
depart from its contemplative attitude, and cog- 
nition is but a consciousness. 

One step further, and we should get so far as to 

1 We think spontaneously of the general and the necessary. 
It is this which serves as a basis for the suggestion and the 
catchword {ridame), and it explains how minds of slender 
culture always tend towards absolute assertions and hasty 
generalisations. 



n8 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

admit that the consciousness serves no purpose 
whatever, and that it is a useless luxury, since, if 
all efficacious virtue is to be found in the sensa- 
tions and the ideas which we consider as material 
facts, the consciousness which reveals them adds 
nothing to, takes nothing from, and modifies 
nothing in them; and everything would go on 
the same, nor would anything in this world be 
changed, if one day the light of consciousness 
were, by chance, to be put out. We might 
imagine a collection of automatons forming a 
human society as complicated as, and not different 
in appearance from, that of conscious beings; 
these automatons would make the same gestures, 
utter the same words as ourselves, would dispute, 
complain, cry, and make love like us ; we might 
even imagine them capable, like us, of psychology. 
This is the thesis of the epiphenomenal con- 
sciousness which Huxley has boldly carried to its 
uttermost conclusions. 

I indicate here these possible conclusions, with- 
out discussing them. It is a question I prefer to 
leave in suspense; it seems to me that one can 
do nothing on this subject but form hypotheses. 



CHAPTER VII 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS — THE SEPA- 
RABILITY OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS 
OBJECT— DISCUSSION OF IDEALISM 

One last question suggests itself with regard to 
the consciousness. In what measure is it separable 
from the object ? Do the consciousness and its 
object form two things or only one ? 

Under observation these two terms constantly 
show themselves united. We experience a sensa- 
tion and have consciousness of it; it is the same 
fact expressed in two different ways. All facts of 
our perception thus present themselves, and they 
are one. But our reason may outstrip our observa- 
tion. We are able to make a distinction between 
the two elements being and being perceived. This 
is not an experimental but an ideological distinc- 
tion, and an abstraction that language makes easy. 

Can we go further, and suppose one of the parts 
thus analysed capable of existing without the 
other? Can sensation exist as physical expression, 
as an object, without being illuminated by the 
consciousness ? Can the consciousness exist with- 
out having an object ? 

"9 



120 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

Let us first speak of the existence of the 
object when considered as separated from the 
consciousness. The problem is highly compli- 
cated. 

It has sometimes been connected with the 
idealist thesis according to which the object of 
consciousness, being itself a modality of the con- 
sciousness, cannot exist apart from it — that is to 
say, outside the periods in which it is perceived. 
It would therefore result from this that this 
separation between existence and perception might 
be made, when it is admitted (contrary to the 
idealist hypothesis) that the object perceived is 
material and the consciousness which perceives it 
mental. In this case, it will be thought, there 
is no link of solidarity between the consciousness 
and its continuity. But I am not of that opinion. 
The union of the consciousness and its object is 
one of fact, which presents itself outside any 
hypothesis on the nature of the object It is 
observation which demonstrates to us that we 
must perceive an object to be assured of its exist- 
ence ; the reason, moreover, confirms the necessity 
of this condition, which remains true whatever 
may be the "stuff" of the object. 

Having stated this, the question is simply to 
know whether this observation of fact should be 
generalised or not. We may, it seems to me, 
decline to generalise it without falling into a 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 121 



contradiction in terms. It may be conceived that 
the objects which we are looking at continue to 
exist, without change, during the moments when 
we have lost sight of them. This seems reasonable 
enough, and is the opinion of " common " sense. 1 

The English philosophers, Bain and Mill, have 
combated this proposition with extraordinary 
ardour, like believers combating a heresy. But 
notwithstanding their attacks it remains intelli- 
gible, and the distinction between being and being 
perceived preserves its logical legitimacy. This 
may be represented, or may be thought ; but can 
it be realised ? 

So far as regards external objects, I think we all, 
in fact, admit it. We all admit a distinction be- 
tween the existence of the outer world and the 
perception we have of it; its existence is one 
thing, and our perception of it is another. The 
existence of the world continues without inter- 
ruption ; our perception is continually interrupted 
by the most fortuitous causes, such as change 
of position, or even the blinking of the eyes; 
its existence is general, universal, independent 
of time and space; our perception is partial, 
particular, local, limited by the horizon of our 
senses, determined by the geographical position of 
our bodies, riddled by the distractions of our 
intelligence, deceived by the illusions of our minds, 

1 That is to say, the sense of the multitude.— Ed. 



122 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



and above all diminished by the infirmity of our 
intelligence, which is able to comprehend so little 
of what it perceives. This is what we all admit 
in practice ; the smallest of our acts implies the 
belief in something perceptible which is wider and 
more durable than our astonished perceptions. I 
could not write these lines unless I implicitly 
supposed that my inkstand, my paper, my pen, 
my room, and the surrounding world subsist when 
I do not see them. It is a postulate of practical 
life. It is also a postulate of science, which 
requires for its explanations of phenomena the 
supposition in them of an indwelling continuity. 
Natural science would become unintelligible if we 
were forced to suppose that with every eclipse of 
our perceptions material actions were suspended. 
There would be beginnings without sequences, 
and ends without beginnings. 

Let us note also that acquired notions on the 
working of our nervous system allow us to give 
this postulate a most precise form : the external 
object is distinct from the nervous system and 
from the phenomena of perception which are 
produced when the nervous system is excited ; it 
is therefore very easy to understand that this 
object continues to exist and to develop its 
properties, even when no brain vibrates in its 
neighbourhood. 

Might we not, with the view of strengthening 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 123 



this conclusion as to the continuous existence of 
things, dispense with this postulate, which seems 
to have the character of a grace, of an alms 
granted to us? Might not this continuous exis- 
tence of objects during the eclipses ot our acts 
of consciousness, be demonstrated? It does not 
seem to me impossible. Let us suppose for a 
moment the correctness of the idealist thesis : all 
our legitimate knowledge of objects is contained 
within the narrow limits of actual sensation ; then, 
we may ask, of what use is the reason ? What is the 
use of the memory ? These functions have precisely 
for their object the enlarging of the sphere of our 
sensations, which is limited in two principal ways, 
by time and by space. Thanks to the reason, we 
manage to see in some way that which our senses 
are unable to perceive, either because it is too 
distant from us, or because there are obstacles 
between us and the object, or because it is a past 
event or an event which has not yet taken place 
which is in question. 

That the reason may be deceived is agreed. 
But will it be asserted that it is always deceived ? 
Shall we go so far as to believe that this is 
an illegitimate mode of cognition ? The idealist 
thesis, if consistent, cannot refuse to extend itself 
to this extreme conclusion; for a reasoned con- 
clusion contains, when it has a meaning, a 
certain assertion on the order of nature, and this 



124 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

assertion is not a perception, since its precise 
object is to fill up the gaps in our perceptions. 
Not being a perception, it must be rejected, if one 
is an idealist. 

The idealist will therefore keep strictly to the 
perception of the moment, and this is so small a 
thing when deprived of all the conjectures which 
enrich it, that the "world, if reduced to this alone, 
would be but the skeleton of a world. There 
would then be no more science, no possibility of 
knowledge. But who could make up his mind 
thus to shut himself up in perception ? 

I suppose, indeed, that there will here be quib- 
bling. This objection will be made : that in the 
hypothesis of a discontinuous existence of things, 
reason may continue to do its work, provided the 
intervention of a possible perception be supposed 
Thus, I notice this morning, on going into my 
garden, that the pond which was dry yesterday is 
full of water. I conclude from this, " It has rained 
in the night." To be consistent with idealism, 
one must simply add : " If some one had been in 
the garden last night, he would have seen it rain." 
In this manner one must re-establish every time 
the rights of perception. 

Be it so. But let us notice that this addition 
has no more importance than a prescribed formula 
in a notarial act ; for instance, the presence of a 
second notary prescribed by the law, but always 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 125 



dispensed with in practice. This prescribed 
formula can always be imagined or even under- 
stood. We shall be in accord with idealism by 
the use of this easy little formula, "If some 
one had been there," or even by saying, "For 
a universal consciousness. . . ." The difference of 
the realist and idealist theory becomes then purely 
verbal This amounts to saying that it disappears. 
But there is always much verbalism in idealism. 

One more objection : if this witness — the con- 
sciousness — suffices to give objects a continuity 
of existence, we may content ourselves with a 
less important witness. Why a man ? The eyes 
of a mollusc would suffice, or those of infusoria, or 
even of a particle of protoplasm: living matter 
would become a condition of the existence of 
dead matter. This, we must acknowledge, is a 
singular condition, and this conclusion condemns 
the doctrine. 



CHAPTER VIII 

DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS — THE SEPARA- 
TION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS FROM ITS OBJECT 
— THE UNCONSCIOUS 

I ask myself whether it is possible, by going 
further along this road of the separation between 
the consciousness and its object, to admit that 
ideas may subsist during the periods when we 
are not conscious of them. It is the problem of 
unconsciousness that I am here stating. 

One of the most simple processes of reasoning 
consists in treating ideas in the same manner 
as we have treated the external objects. We 
have admitted that the consciousness is a thing 
superadded to the external objects, like the light 
which lights up a landscape, but does not con- 
stitute it and may be extinguished without de- 
stroying it. We continue the same interpretation 
by saying that ideas prolong their existence while 
they are not being thought, in the same way and 
for the same motive that material bodies continue 
theirs while they are not being perceived. All 
that it seems permissible to say is that this con- 
ception is not unrealisable. 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 127 

Let us now place ourselves at the point of view 
of the consciousness. We have supposed up to the 
present the suppression of the consciousness, and 
have seen that we can still imagine the object 
continuing to exist. Is the converse possible? 
Let us suppose that the object is suppressed. Can 
the consciousness then continue to exist ? On this 
last point it seems that doubt is not possible, and 
we must answer in the negative. A consciousness 
without an object, an empty consciousness, in 
consequence, cannot be conceived ; it would be a 
zero — a pure nothingness; it could not manifest 
itself. We might admit, in strictness, that such 
a consciousness might exist virtually as a power 
which is not exercised, a reserve, a potentiality, 
or a possibility of being ; but we cannot compre- 
hend that this power can realise or actualise itself. 
There is therefore no actual consciousness without 
an object 

The problem we have just raised, that of the 
separability of the elements which compose an 
act of consciousness, is continued by another 
problem — that of unconsciousness. It is almost 
the same problem, for to ask one's self what 
becomes of a known thing when we separate from 
it the consciousness which at first accompanied 
it, is to ask one's self in what an unconscious 
phenomenon consists. 

We have, till now, considered the two principal 



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^ ^. ... n> ik? .iec^s. 

^ .r^'xc *v= — con- 
. v There 
^ ^ca^^csci:<& Con- 

„ . » ■ m; r»:« . iter, on 

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■ ■ * " 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 129 



sciousness is a magnitude capable of increase 
and decrease, like sensation itself. According to 
the individual, consciousness may have a very 
large or a very small field, and may embrace at the 
same time a variable number of objects. I can 
pay attention to several things at the same time, 
but when I am tired it becomes more difficult to 
me. I lose in extension, or, as is still said, the 
field of consciousness is restricted. It may also 
lose not only in extent of surface, but in depth. 
We have all of us observed in our own selves 
moments of obscure consciousness when we under- 
stand dimly, and moments of luminous conscious- 
ness which carry one almost to the very bottom of 
things. It is difficult to consider those in the 
wrong who admit, with Leibnitz, the existence of 
small states of consciousness. The lessening of 
the consciousness is already our means of under- 
standing the unconscious; unconsciousness is the 
limit of this reduction. 1 

This singular fact has also been noticed, that, in 
the same individual there may co-exist several 
kinds of consciousness which do not enter into 
communication with each other and which are not 
acquainted with each other. There is a princi- 
pal consciousness which speaks, and, in addition, 

1 I think I have come across in Abistotlb the ingenious idea 
that the enf eeblement of the consciousness and its disorder may 
be due to the enf eeblement and disorder of the object. It is a 
theory which is by no means improbable. 

I 



130 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

accessory kinds of consciousness which do not 
speak, but reveal their existence by the use of 
other modes of expression, of which the most 
frequent is writing. 

This doubling or fractionation of the conscious- 
ness and personality have often been described 
in the case of hysterical subjects. They sometimes 
occur quite spontaneously, but mostly they require 
a little suggestion and cultivation. In any case, 
that they are produced in one way or other proves 
that they are possible, and, for the theory, this 
possibility is essential. Facts of this kind do not 
lead to a theory of the unconscious, but they 
enable us to understand how certain phenomena, 
unconscious in appearance, are conscious to them- 
selves, because they belong to states of consciousness 
which have been separated from each other. 

A third thesis, more difficult of comprehension 
than the other two, supposes that the conscious- 
ness may be preserved in an unconscious form. 
This is difficult to admit, because unconsciousness 
is the negation of consciousness. It is like saying 
that light can be preserved when darkness is pro- 
duced, or that an object still exists when, by the 
hypothesis, it has been radically destroyed. This 
idea conveys no intelligible meaning, and there is 
no need to dwell on it. 

We have not yet exhausted all the concepts 
whereby we may get to unconsciousness. Here is 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 131 



another, the last I shall quote, without, however, 
claiming that it is the last which exists. We 
might call it the physiological concept, for it is 
the one which the physiologists employ for choice. 
It is based upon the observation of the phenomena 
which are produced in the nervous system during 
our acts of consciousness; these phenomena 
precede consciousness as a rule, and condition 
it. According to a convenient figure which has 
been long in use, the relations of the physio- 
logical phenomenon to the consciousness are 
represented as follows: the physiological pheno- 
menon consists in an excitement which, at one 
time, follows a direct and short route from the 
door by which it enters the nervous system to 
the door by which it makes its exit. In this 
case, it works like a simple mechanical pheno- 
menon ; but sometimes it makes a longer journey, 
and takes a circuitous road by which it passes 
into the higher nerve centres, and it is at the 
moment when it takes this circuitous road that 
the phenomenon of consciousness is produced. 
The use of this figure does not prejudge any 
important question. 

Going further, many contemporary authors 
do not content themselves with the proposition 
that the consciousness is conditioned by the 
nervous phenomenon, but suggest also that it is 
continually accompanied by it. Every psychical 



132 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

fact of perception, of emotion, or of idea should 
have, it is supposed, a physiological basis. It 
would therefore be, taken in its entirety, psycho- 
physiological. This is called the parallelist theory. 

We cannot discuss this here, as we shall meet 
with it again in the third part of this book. It 
has the advantage of leading to a very simple 
definition of unconsciousness. The unconscious 
is that which is purely physiological We repre- 
sent to ourselves the mechanical part of the total 
phenomenon continuing to produce itself, in the 
absence of the consciousness, as if this last con- 
tinued to follow and illuminate it. 

Such are the principal conceptions that may be 
formed of the unconscious. They are probably not 
the only ones, and our list is not exhaustive. 

After having indicated what the unconscious is, 
we will terminate by pointing out what it is not 
and what it cannot be. 

We think, or at least we have impliedly supposed 
in the preceding definitions, that the unconscious 
is only something unknown, which may have been 
known, or which might become known under 
certain conditions, and which only differs from 
the known by the one characteristic of not being 
actually known. If this notion be correct, one 
has really not the right to arm this unconscious- 
ness with formidable powers. It has the power 
of the reality to which it corresponds, but its 



DEFINITION OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS 133 



character of unconsciousness adds nothing to this. 
It is the same with it as with the science of the 
future. No scholar will hesitate to admit that 
that science will be deeper and more refined 
than that already formed. But it is not from 
the fact that it is unknown that it will deserve 
its superiority: it is from the phenomena that 
it will embrace. To give to that which is 
unconscious, as we here understand it, an over- 
whelming superiority over the conscious as such, 
we must ^dmit that the consciousness is not only 
a useless luxury, but the dethronement of the 
forces that it accompanies. 

In the next place, I decline to admit that the 
consciousness itself can become unconscious, and 
yet continue in some way under an unconscious 
form. This would be, in my opinion, bringing 
together two conceptions which contradict each 
other, and thus denying after having affirmed. 
From the moment that the consciousness dies, 
there remains nothing of it, unless it be the condi- 
tions of its appearance, conditions which are distinct 
from itself. Between two moments of conscious- 
ness separated by time or by a state of unconscious- 
ness, there does not and cannot exist any link. 
I feel incapable of imagining of what this link 
could be composed, unless it were material — that 
is to say, unless it were supplied from the class 
of objects. I have already said that the sub- 



134 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

stantialist thesis endeavours to establish a con- 
tinuity between one consciousness and another 
separated by time, by supposing a something 
durable, of which the consciousness would be 
a property of intermittent manifestation. They 
would thus explain the interruptions of con- 
sciousness as the interruptions in the light of a 
lamp. When the light is extinguished, the lamp 
remains in darkness, but is still capable of being 
lighted. Let us discard this metaphor, which 
may lead to illusion. The concept of conscious- 
ness can furnish no link and no mental state 
which remains when the consciousness is not 
made real; if this link exists, it is in the per- 
manence of the material objects and of the 
nervous organism which allows the return of 
analogous conditions of matter. 



CHAPTER IX 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 

Let us resume the study of the preceding ideas 
in another form. Since, moreover, to define mind 
is at the same time to define psychology, let us 
seek for the truth which we can glean from the 
definitions of this science. Our object is not to 
discover an exact definition, but to make use of 
those already existing. 

To define psychology is to describe the features 
of the domain <Jver which this science holds sway, 
and at the same time to indicate the boundaries 
which separate it from its neighbours. At first 
sight this is an affair of geometric survey, pre- 
senting no kind of difficulty ; for psychology does 
not merge by insensible transitions into the neigh- 
bouring sciences, as physics does with chemistry, 
for example, or chemistry with biology. 

To all the sciences of external nature psycho- 
logy offers the violent opposition of the moral 
to the physical world. It cannot be put in 
line with the physical sciences. It occupies, on 
the contrary, a position apart It is the starting 
point, the most abstract and simple of the moral 

135 



136 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

sciences; and it bears the same relation to them 
that mechanics does to the physical. 

All this is doubtless true ; and yet a very 
great difficulty has been experienced in condensing 
into a clear definition the essence of psychology. 
This is proved by the multiplicity of definitions 
attempted. They are so many because none of 
them has proved completely satisfactory. Their 
abundance .shows their insufficiency. I will try 
to introduce a little order into these attempts, 
and propose to distribute the definitions of psy- 
chology into the following categories: — 

1. The definition by substance ; the metaphy- 

sical definition par excellence. 

2. The definition by enumeration. 



3. „ „ method. 

4. „ „ degree of certainty. 

5. „ „ content. 

6. „ „ point of view. 

7. „ „ the peculiar nature of men- 

tal laws. 



We will rapidly run through this series of efforts 
at definition, and shall criticise and reject nearly 
the whole of them; for the last alone seems 
exact — that is to say, in harmony with the ideas 
laid down above. 

Metaphysical definition has to-day taken a 
slightly archaistic turn. Psychology used to be 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 137 

considered as the science of the soul. This is 
quite abandoned. Modern authors have adopted 
the expression and also the idea of Lange, 1 who 
was, I think, the first to declare that we ought 
to cultivate a soulless psychology. This cate- 
gorical declaration caused an uproar, and a few 
ill-informed persons interpreted it to mean that 
the new psychology which has spread in France 
under cover of the name of Ribot, sought to deny 
the existence of the soul, and was calculated to 
incline towards materialism. This is an error. 

It is very possible, indeed, that several adepts 
of the new or experimental psychology may be 
materialists from inward conviction. The exclu- 
sive cultivation of external facts, of phenomena 
termed material, evidently tends — this is a mys- 
tery to none — to incline the mind towards the 
metaphysical doctrine of materialism. But, after 
making this avowal, it is right to add at once 
that psychology, as a science of facts, is the 
vassal of no metaphysical doctrine. It is neither 
spiritualist, materialist, nor monist, but a science 
of facts solely. Ribot and his pupils have pro- 
claimed this aloud at every opportunity. Con- 
sequently it must be recognised that the rather 
amphibological expression "soulless psychology" 
implies no negation of the existence of the soul. 
It is — and this is quite a different thing — rather 

1 LANGB, HisUnrt du Mattrialitme, II., 2me. partie, chap. iii. 



138 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

an attitude of reserve in regard to this problem. 
We do not solve this problem; we put it on 
one side. 

And, certainly, we are right to do so. The 
soul, viewed as a substance — that is, as a some- 
thing distinct from psychical phenomena, which, 
while being their cause and support, yet remains 
inaccessible to our direct means of cognition — is 
only an hypothesis, and it cannot serve as objec- 
tive to a science of facts. This would imply a 
contradiction in terms. 

Unfortunately, we must confess that if it be 
right to relegate to metaphysics the discussion 
on the concept of the soul, it does not really 
suffice to purge our minds of all metaphysics; 
and a person who believes himself to be a 
simple and strict experimentalist is often a 
metaphysician without knowing it. These ex- 
communications of metaphysics also seem rather , 
childish at the present day. There is less risk 
than some years ago in declaring that: "Here 
metaphysics commence and positive science 
ends, and I will go no further." There is even 
a tendency in modern psychologists to interest 
themselves in the highest philosophical problems, 
and to take up a certain position with regard to 
them. 

The second kind of definition is, we have said, 
that by enumeration. It consists in placing before 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 139 

the eyes of the reader an assortment of psycho- 
logical phenomena and then saying: "These are 
the things psychology studies." One will take 
readily as samples the ideas, reasonings, emotions, 
and other manifestations of mental life. If this 
is only a strictly provisional definition, a simple 
introduction to the subject, we accept it liter- 
ally. It may serve to give us a first impression 
of things, and to refresh the memories of those 
who, by a rather extraordinary chance, would 
not doubt that psychology studies our thoughts. 
But whatever may be the number of these deeply 
ignorant persons, they constitute, I think, a 
negligible quantity; and, after these prelimin- 
aries, we must come to a real definition and not 
juggle with the problem, which consists in in- 
dicating in what the spiritual is distinguished 
from the material Let us leave on one side, 
therefore, the definitions by enumeration. 

Now comes the definition by method. Numbers 
of authors have supposed that it is by its method 
that psychology is distinguished from the other 
sciences. 

To the mind is attached the idea of the within, 
to nature the idea of being without the mind, of 
constituting a "without" (un dehors). It is a 
vague idea, but becomes precise in a good many 
metaphors, and has given rise to several forms 
of speech. Since the days of Locke, we have 



140 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

always spoken of the internal life of the mind 
as contrasted with the external life, of subjective 
reality as contrasted with objective reality; and 
in the same way we oppose the external senses 
to the inner sense (the internal perception), which 
it has at times been proposed to erect into a sixth 
sense. Though no longer quite the Cartesian 
dualism, this is still a dualism. 

It has also been said that psychology is the 
science of introspection, and, in addition, that 
scientific psychology is a controlled introspection. 
This science of the " internal facts of man " would 
thus be distinguished from the other natural 
sciences which are formed by the use of our outer 
senses, by external observation — that is to say, to 
use a neologism, by externospection. This verbal 
symmetry may satisfy for a moment minds given 
to words, but on reflection it is perceived that the 
distinction between introspection and externo- 
spection does not correspond to a fundamental 
and constant difference in the nature of things 
or in the processes of cognition. I acknow- 
ledge it with some regret, and thus place 
myself in contradiction with myself; for I for 
a long time believed, and have even said in 
print, that psychology is the science of introspec- 
tion. My error arose from my having made too 
many analyses of detail, and not having mounted 
to a sufficiently wide-reaching conception. 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 141 

The definition I have given of consciousness is 
the implied condemnation of the above ideas. 
Consciousness, being nothing but an act of revela- 
tion, has neither a within n9r a without ; it does 
not correspond to a special domain which would 
be an inner one with regard to another domain. 

Every consideration on the position of things is 
borrowed from the sphere of the object, and re- 
mains foreign to the sphere of the consciousness. 
It is by an abuse of language that we speak of 
the outer world in relation to the world of 
consciousness, and it is pure imagination on the 
part of philosophers to have supposed that our 
sensations are first perceived as internal states 
and states of consciousness, and are subsequently 
projected without to form the outer world. The 
notion of internal and external is only understood 
for certain objects which we compare by position 
to certain others. 

In fact, we find that the opposition between 
an external and an internal series is generally 
founded on two characteristics: sensation is 
considered external in relation to the idea, 
and an object of cognition is considered as 
internal when it is accessible only to ourselves. 
When these two characteristics are isolated from 
each other, one may have doubts ; but when they 
co-exist, then the outwardness or inwardness ap- 
pears fully evidenced. We see then that this 



142 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

distinction has nothing to do with the value of 
consciousness, and has nothing mental about it. 

It is thus that our ideas are judged from in- 
ternal events. It is our microcosm opposed to the 
macrocosm. It is the individual opposed to the 
social. Looking at an external object, we remain 
in communion with our fellows, for we receive, 
or think we receive, identical sensations. At all 
events, we receive corresponding sensations. On 
the other hand, my thought is mine, and is known 
to me alone ; it is my sanctuary, my private closet, 
where others do not enter. Every one can see 
what I see, but no one knows what I think. 

But this difference in the accessibility of pheno- 
mena is not due to their peculiar nature. It is 
connected with a different fact, with the modes of 
excitement which call them forth. If the visual 
sensation is common to all, it is because the ex- 
citing cause of the sensation is an object external 
to our nervous systems, and acting at a distance 
on all. 1 The tactile sensation is at the beginning 
more personal to the one who experiences it, since 
it requires contact; and the lower sensations are 
in this intimacy still in progress. And then, the 

1 Let us remark, in passing, how badly nature has organised 
the system of communication between thinking beings. In what 
we experience we have nothing in common with oar fellows ; 
each one experiences his own sensations and not those of others. 
The only meeting point of different minds is found in the inac- 
cessible domain of the noumcna. 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 143 

same object can give rise, in common-place cir- 
cumstances, to a sensation either common to all 
beings or special to one alone. The capsule of 
antipyrine which I swallow is, before my doing so, 
visible to all eyes ; once in my mouth, I am the 
only one to perceive it. It is therefore possible 
that the same sensation, according to the displace- 
ments of the object which excites it, may make 
part of the internal or of the external series ; and 
as all psychic life is sensation, even effort, and, 
as we are assured, emotion, it follows that our 
argument extends to all the psychical elements. 

Finally, the internal or external character of 
events, which might be called their geographical 
position, is a characteristic which has no influence 
upon the method destined to take cognisance of 
it. The method remains one. Introspection does 
not represent a source of cognition distinct from 
externospection, for the same faculties of the 
mind — reason, attention, and reflection — act on 
sensation, the source of the so-called external 
sciences, and on the idea, the source of the so- 
called inner science. A fact can be studied by 
essentially the same process, whether regarded 
by the eyes or depicted by the memory. The 
consciousness changes its object and orientation, 
not its nature. It is as if, with the same opera- 
glass, we looked in turn at the wall of the room 
and through the window. 



144 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

I can even quote on this point a significant 
fact: there are observers who are organised in 
such a way that they especially observe by 
memory. Placed before the sensorial phenome- 
non which strikes their senses, they are sometimes 
amazed, as if hypnotised ; they require to get away 
from it to regain consciousness of themselves, to 
analyse the fact, and to master it, and it is by 
means of the memory that they study it, on 
condition, of course, of afterwards coming back 
to verify their conclusions by a fresh observation 
from nature. Will it be said that the physicist, 
the chemist, or the biologist who follows this 
slow method, and who thus observes retroactively, 
practises physics and biology by introspection? 
Evidently this would be ridiculous. 

Conversely, introspection may, in certain cases, 
adopt the procedure of externospection. No doubt 
it would be inexact to say that the perception 
of one of our ideas always takes place through 
the same mechanism as the perception of one 
of our sensations. To give an account of what we 
think does not imply the same work as in the case 
of what we see ; for, generally, our thoughts and 
our images do not appear to us spontaneously. 
They are first sought for by us, and are only 
realised after having been wished for. We go 
from the vague to the precise, from the confused 
to the clear: the direction of thought precedes, 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 145 

then, its realisation in images; and the latter, 
being expected, is necessarily comprehended when 
it is formed. But we may come across curious 
circumstances in which it is the image which has 
precedence over its appearance, and in that case it 
is exact to say that this uninvoked image must 
be interpreted and recognised as if it were an 
external object. In cases of this kind, there passes 
through our mind something which surprises us. 
I see, by internal vision, a face with a red nose, 
and I have to search my memory for a long 
time, even for days, in order to give precision to 
the vague feeling that I have seen it before, so 
as to finally say with confidence, "It is So and 
So ! " Or else I hear in my inner ear a certain 
voice, with a metallic tone and authoritative in- 
flections : this voice pronounces scientific phrases, 
gives a series of lectures, but I know not to whom 
it belongs, and it costs me a long effort to reach 
the interpretation : it is the voice of M. Dastre ! 
There is, then, a certain space of time, more or 
less long, in which we can correctly assert that 
we are not aware of what we are thinking; we 
are in the presence of a thought in the same 
state of uncertainty as in that of an external, 
unknown, and novel object The labour of classi- 
fication and of interpretation cast upon us is of 
the same order ; and, when this labour is effected 
incorrectly, it may end in an illusion. Therefore 

K 



146 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



illusions of thought are quite as possible as illu- 
sions of the senses, though rarer for the reasons 
above stated. But the question of frequency has 
no theoretical importance. 

I have shown elsewhere, by experiments on 
hysterics, that it is possible by the intermediary 
of their insensibility to touch to suggest ideas on 
the value of which the patients make mistakes. 
For instance, you take the finger in which they 
have no sensation, you touch it, you bend it. The 
patient, not seeing what is done, does not feel it, 
but the tactile sensation unfelt by their principal 
consciousness somehow awakes the visual image 
of the finger; this enters into the field of conscious- 
ness, and most often is not recognised by the 
subject, who describes the occurrence in his own 
way; he claims, for instance, that he thinks of 
sticks or of columns. In reality he does not know 
of what he is thinking, and we know better than 
he. He is thinking of his finger, and does not 
recognise it. 

All these examples show that the clearly defined 
characteristics into which it is sought to divide 
extrospection and introspection do not exist. 
There is, however, a reason for preserving the 
distinction, because it presents a real interest for 
the psychology of the individual. These two 
words introspection and extrospection admirably 
convey the difference in the manner of thinking 




DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 147 

between those who from preference look, and 
those who from preference reflect. On the one 
hand, the observers, who are often men of action ; 
on the other, the speculators, who are often 
mystics. But it would be no more legitimate by 
this means to separate psychology and physics 
than to say, for instance, " There are two kinds of 
geology : one is the geology of France, for one is 
acquainted with it without going from home, and 
the other is that of the rest of the world, because 
in order to know it one must cross the frontier." 

We reject, therefore, the definition drawn from 
the difference of method. At bottom there is no 
difference of method, but only differences of pro- 
cess, of technique. The method is always the 
same, for it is derived from the application of a 
certain number of laws to the objects of cognition, 
and these laws remain the same in all spheres of 
application. 

Here is another difference of method which, if 
it were true, would have an incalculable import- 
ance. Psychology, we are told, is a science of 
direct and immediate experiment ; it studies facts 
as they present themselves to our consciousness, 
while the natural sciences are sciences of in- 
direct and mediate experiment, for they are 
compelled to interpret the facts of consciousness 
and draw from them conclusions on nature. It 
has also been said, in a more ambitious formula, 



148 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

" The science of physical objects is relative ; psycho- 
logical science is absolute." 

Let us examine this by the rapid analysis of any 
perception taken at haphazard. What I perceive 
directly, immediately, we are told, is not the 
object, it is my state of consciousness ; the object 
is inferred, concluded, and taken cognisance of 
through the intermediary of my state of con- 
sciousness. We only know it, says Lotze, circa 
rem. It is therefore apprehended less immedi- 
ately, and every natural science employs a more 
roundabout method than that of psychology. 
This last, by studying states of consciousness, 
which alone are known to us directly, compre- 
hends reality itself, absolute reality. "There is 
more absolute reality," M. Rabier boldly says, " in 
the simple feeling that a man, or even an animal, 
has of its pain when beaten than in all the 
theories of physics, for, beyond these theories, 
it can be asked, what are the things that exist. 
But it is an absurdity to ask one's self if, beyond 
the pain of which one is conscious, there be not 
another pain different from that one." 1 

Let us excuse in psychologists this petty and 
common whim for exaggerating the merit of the 
science they pursue. But here the limit is really 
passed, and no scholar will admit that the percep- 
tion and representation of a body, as it may take 

1 E. Rabier, Leyms de Philo$ophU, " Psychologic," p. 33. 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 149 



place in the brain of a Berthelot, can present any 
inferiority as a cognition of the absolute, to the 
pain felt by the snail I crush under my foot. 
Nobody except metaphysicians will acknowledge 
that psychology is a more precise and certain 
science than physics or chemistry. 

The criterion furnished by the development of 
the respective sciences would prove just the con- 
trary. The observations of psychology are always 
rather imprecise. Psychological phenomena, not- 
withstanding the efforts of Fechner and his school, 
are not yet measured with the same strictness and 
ease as the tangible reality. To speak plainly, the 
psychologist who vaunts the superiority of his 
method, and only shows inferior results, places 
himself in a somewhat ridiculous and contradic- 
tory position; he deserves to be compared to 
those spiritualists who claim the power of evok- 
ing the souls of the illustrious dead and only 
get from them platitudes. 

In the main the arguments of the meta- 
physicians given above appear to me to contain 
a grave error. This consists in supposing that 
the natural sciences study the reality hidden 
beneath sensation, and only make use of this 
fact as of a sign which enables them to get 
back from effect to cause. This is quite 
inexact. That the natural sciences are limited 
by sensation is true ; but they do not go 



150 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

outside it, they effect their constructions with 
sensation alone. And the reason is very simple : 
it is the only thing they know. To the meta- 
physical psychologist, who claims sensation as 
his own property, saying, "But this sensation 
is a state of my consciousness, it is mine, it is 
myself," the physicist has the right to answer : " I 
beg your pardon! this sensation is the external 
object that I am studying; it is my column of 
mercury, my spring, my precipitate, my amoeba ; I 
comprehend these objects directly, and I want no 
other." Psychology finds itself, therefore, exactly 
on the same footing as the other sciences in the 
degree in which it studies sensations that it 
considers as its own property. I have already 
said that the sensations proper to psychology 
are hardly represented otherwise than by the 
emotional sensations produced by the storms in 
the apparatus of organic life. 

We now come to the definitions by content. 
They have been numerous, but we shall only 
quote a few. The most usual consists in saying, 
that Psychology studies the facts of consciousness. 
This formula passes, in general, as satisfactory. 
The little objection raised against it is, that it 
excludes the unconscious facts which play so im- 
portant a part in explaining the totality of mental 
life; but it only requires some usual phrase to 
repair this omission. One might add, for in- 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 151 

stance, to the above formula : conscious facts and 
those which, while unconscious under certain con- 
ditions, are yet conscious in others. 

This is not, however, the main difficulty, which is 
far more serious. On close examination, it is seen 
that the term, fact of coTisciotusness, is very elastic, 
and that for a reason easy to state. This is, that 
all facts which exist and are revealed to us reach 
us by the testimony of the consciousness, and are, 
consequently, facts of consciousness. If I look at 
a locomotive, and analyse its machinery, I act 
like a mechanic ; if I study under the microscope 
the structure of infusoria, I practise biology ; and 
yet the sight of the locomotive, the perception of 
the infusoria, are just facts of consciousness, and 
should belong to psychology, if one takes literally 
the above definition, which is so absolute that 
it absorbs the entire world into the science of 
the mind. It might, indeed, be remarked that 
certain phenomena would remain strictly psycho- 
logical, such as, for instance, the emotions, the 
study of which would not be disputed by any 
physical science ; for the world of nature offers 
us nothing comparable to an emotion or an effort 
of will, while, on the other hand, everything 
which is the object of physical science — that is, 
everything which can be perceived by our ex- 
ternal senses — may be claimed by psychology. 
Therefore, it is very evident the above definition 



152 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

is much too wide, and does not agree with solo 
definite It does not succeed in disengaging the 
essential characteristic of physics. This charac- 
teristic indeed exists, and we foresee it, but we 
do not formulate it. 

Another definition by content has not been 
much more happy. To separate the material from 
the moral, the conception of Descartes was re- 
membered, and we were told that : " Psychology 
is the science of what exists only in time, while 
physics is the science of what exists at once in 
time and in space." 

To this theoretical reasoning it might already 
be objected that, in fact, and in the life we lead, 
we never cease to localise in space, though some- 
what vaguely, our thought, our Ego, and our in- 
tellectual whole. At this moment I am consider- 
ing myself, and taking myself as an example. I am 
writing these lines in my study, and no metaphy- 
sical argument can cause me to abandon my firm 
conviction that my intellectual whole is in this 
room, on the second floor of my house at Meudon. 
I am here, and not elsewhere. My body is here ; 
and my soul, if I have one, is here. I am where 
my body is ; I believe even that I am within my 
body. 

This localisation, which certainly has not the 
exactness nor even the characteristics of the 
localisation of a material body in space, seems to 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 153 



me to result from the very great importance we 
attach to the existence of our body in perception 
and in movement. Our body accompanies all our 
perceptions; its changes of position cause these 
perceptions to vary ; the accidents which happen 
to it bring us pleasure or pain. Some of its move- 
ments are under our orders; we observe that 
others are the consequences of our thoughts and 
our emotions. It occupies, therefore, among the 
objects of cognition a privileged place, which 
renders it more intimate and more dear to us 
than other objects. There is no need to inquire 
here whether, in absolute reality, I am lodged 
within it, for this "I" is an artificial product 
manufactured from memories. I have before 
explained what is the value of the relation 
subject-object. It is indisputable that in the 
manufacture of the subject we bring in the body. 
This is too important an element for it not to 
have the right to form part of the synthesis ; it 
is really its nucleus. As, on the other hand, all 
the other elements of the synthesis are psychical, 
invisible, and reduced to being faculties and 
powers, it may be convenient to consider them as 
occupying the centre of the body or of the brain. 
There is no need to discuss this synthesis, for it is 
one of pure convenience. As well inquire whether 
the personality of a public company is really 
localised at its registered offices, round the green 



154 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

baize cover which adorns the table in the board- 
room. 

Another definition of psychology, which is 
at once a definition by content and a defini- 
tion by method, has often been employed by 
philosophers and physiologists. It consists in 
supposing that there really exist two ways of 
arriving at the cognition of objects: the within 
and the without. These two ways are as opposed 
to each other as the right and wrong side of a 
stuff. It is in this sense that psychology is the 
science of the within and looks at the wrong side 
of the stuff, while the natural sciences look at the 
right side. And it is so true, they add, that the 
same phenomenon appears under two radically 
different forms according as we look at it from 
the one or the other point of view. Thus, it is 
pointed out to us, every one of our thoughts is 
in correlation with a particular state of our cere- 
bral matter; our thought is the subjective and 
mental face; the corresponding cerebral process 
is the objective and material face. 

Then the difference between representation, 
which is a purely psychological phenomenon, and 
a cerebral state which is a material one, and 
reducible to movement, is insisted upon; and it 
is declared that these two orders of phenomena 
are separated by irreducible differences. 

Lastly, to take account of the meaning of these 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 155 



differences, and to explain them, it is pointed out 
that they are probably connected with the modes 
of cognition which intervene to comprehend the 
mental and the physical. The mental phenomenon, 
we are told, is comprehended by itself, and as it is ; 
it is known without any mystery, and in its absolute 
reality. The physical phenomenon, on the contrary, 
only reaches us through the intermediary of our 
nerves, more or less transformed in consequence by 
the handling in transport. It is an indirect cogni- 
tion which causes us to comprehend matter; we 
have of this last only a relative and apparent 
notion, which sufficiently explains how it may 
difier from a phenomenon of thought. 

I have already had occasion to speak of this 
dualism, when we were endeavouring to define sen- 
sation. We return to its criticism once more, for 
it is a conception which in these days has become 
classic ; and it is only by repeatedly attacking it 
that it will be possible to demonstrate its error. 

To take an example : I look at the plain before me, 
and see a flock of sheep pass over it. At the same 
time an observer is by my side and is not looking 
at the same thing as myself. It is not at the plain 
that he looks; it is, I will suppose, within my 
brain. Armed with a microscope d, la Jules Verne, 
he succeeds in seeing what is passing beneath my 
skull, and he notices within my fibres and nerve 
cells those phenomena of undulation which phy- 



156 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

Biologists have hitherto described hypothetically. 
This observer notices then, that, while I am look- 
ing over the plain, my optic nerve conveys a certain 
kind of movements — these are, I suppose, displace- 
ments of molecules which execute a complicated 
kind of dance. The movement follows the course 
of the optic nerve, traverses the chiasma, goes along 
the fascia, passes the internal capsule, and finally 
arrives at the visual centres of the occipital region. 
Here, then, are the two terms of comparison con- 
stituted: on the one hand, we have a certain 
representation — that is, my own ; and on the other 
hand, coinciding with this representation, we have 
the dynamic changes in the nerve centres. These 
are the two things constituting the right and 
wrong side of the stuff. We shall be told : " See 
how little similarity there is here ! A representa- 
tion is a physical fact, a movement of molecules 
a material fact." And further, "If these two 
facts are so little like each other, it is because 
they reach us by two different routes." 

I think both these affirmations equally dis- 
putable. Let us begin with the second. Where 
does one see that we possess two different sources 
of knowledge? Or that we can consider an 
object under two different aspects ? Where are 
our duplicate organs of the senses, of which the 
one is turned inward and the other outward ? In 
the example chosen for this discussion, I have 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 157 

supposed two persons, each of whom experiences 
a visual perception. One looks at one object, the 
other at another ; but both are looking with the 
same organs of sense, that is, with their eyes. How 
is it possible to understand that these eyes can, in 
turn, according to the necessity of the moment, 
see the two faces, physioal and mental, of the 
same object? 

They are the two faces of an identical object, is the 
answer made to us, because the two visions, although 
applied to the same object, are essentially different. 
On the one hand is a sensation of displacement, of 
movement, of a dance executed by the molecules 
of some proteid substance ; on the other hand is a 
flock of sheep passing over the plain at a distance 
of a hundred metres away. 

It seems to me that here also the argument 
advanced is not sound. In the first place, it is 
essential to notice that not only are the two paths 
of cognition identical, but also that the percep- 
tions are of the same nature. There is in this no 
opposition between the physical and the mental. 
What is compared are the two phenomena, which 
are both mixed and are physico-mental — physical, 
through the object to which they are applied, 
mental, through the act of cognition they imply. 
To perceive an object in the plain and to 
perceive a dynamic state of the brain are two 
operations which each imply an act of cognition ; 



158 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

and, in addition, the object of this knowledge is as 
material in the one as in the other case. A flock 
of sheep is matter just as much as my brain. 

No doubt, here are objects which differ; my 
observer and myself have not the same perception. 
I acknowledge, but do not wonder at it. How 
could our two perceptions be similar ? I look at 
the sheep, and he at the interior of my brain. It 
is not astonishing that, looking at such different 
objects, we should receive images also different. 
Or, again, if this other way of putting it be pre- 
ferred, I would say : the individual A looks at the 
flock through the intermediary of his nervous 
system, while B looks at it through that of two 
nervous systems, put as it were end to end (though 
not entirely), his own nervous system first, and 
then that of A. How, then, could they experience 
the same sensation ? 

They could only have an identical sensation if 
the idea of the ancients were to be upheld, who 
understood the external perception of bodies to 
result from particles detaching themselves from 
their bodies, and after a more or less lengthy 
flight, striking and entering into our organs of 
sense. 1 

Let us imagine, just for a moment, one of our 

1 This seems to have been the opinion of Democritns. The 
modern doctrine of radiation from the human body, if estab- 
lished, would go nearly as far as the supposition in the text. 
Up till now, however, it lacks confirmation. — Ed. 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 159 

nerves — the optic nerve, for instance — transformed 
into a hollow tube, along which the emissions of 
miniatures should wend their way. In this case, 
evidently, if so strange a disposition were to be 
realised, and if. B could see what was flowing in 
the optic nerve of A, he would experience a 
sensation almost analogous to that of A. When- 
ever the latter saw a dog, a sheep, or a shepherd, 
B would likewise see in the optic canal minute 
dogs, microscopic sheep, and Lilliputian shepherds. 
At the cost of such a childish conception, a parity 
of content in the sensations of our two spectators 
A and B might be supposed. But I will not 
dwell on this. 

The above considerations seem to me to explain 
the difference generally noticed between thought 
and the physiological process. It is not a differ- 
ence of nature, an opposition of two essences, or 
of two worlds — it is simply a difference of object ; 
just that which separates my visual perception 
of a tree and my visual perception of a dog. 
There remains to know in what manner we 
understand the relation of these two processes: 
this is another problem which we will examine 
later. 

Since the content does not give us the differ- 
entiation we desire, we will abandon the definitions 
of psychology by content. What now remains? 
The definitions from the point of view. The same 



i6o THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



fact may be looked at, like a landscape, from 
different points of view, and appears different 
with the changes therein. It is so with the 
facts we consider psychical, and the autonomy 
of psychology would thus be a matter of point of 
view. 

It has, then, been supposed — and this is a very 
important proposition — that the distinctive feature 
of psychical facts does not consist in their forming 
a class of particular events. On the contrary, 
their characteristic is to be studied in their de- 
pendency on the persons who bring them about. 
This interesting affirmation is not new : it may be 
read in the works of Mach, Ktilpe, Mtinsterberg, 
and, especially, of Ebbinghaus, from whom I 
quote the following lines of quite remarkable 
clearness : " Psychology is not distinguished from 
sciences like physics and biology, which are 
generally and rightly opposed to it, by a 
different content, in the way that, for instance, 
zoology is distinguished from mineralogy or as- 
tronomy. It has the same content, but considers 
it from a different point of view and with a 
different object. It is the science, not of a given 
part of the world, but of the whole world, con- 
sidered, however, in a certain relation. It studies, 
in the world, those formations, processes, and 
relations, the properties of which are essentially 
determined by the properties and functions of 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 161 

an organism, of an organised individual. . . . 
Psychology, in short, considers the world from an 
individual and subjective point of view, while the 
science of physics studies it as if it were inde- 
pendent of us." 

Over these definitions by point of view, one 
might quibble a little ; for those who thus define 
psychology are not always consistent with them- 
selves. In other passages of their writings they 
do not fail to oppose psychical to physiological 
phenomena, and they proclaim the irreducible 
heterogeneity of these two orders of phenomena 
and the impossibility of seeing in physics the 
producing cause of the moral. Ebbinghaus is 
certainly one of the modern writers who have 
most strongly insisted on this idea of opposition 
between the physiological and the psychical, and 
he is a convinced dualist. Now I do not very 
clearly understand in what the principle of hetero- 
geneity can consist to a mind which admits, on 
the other hand, that psychology does not differ 
from the physical sciences by its content. 

However, I confine myself here to criticising 
the consequences and not the starting point. 
The definition of the psychical phenomenon by 
the point of view seems to me correct, although 
it has more concision than clearness ; for it rests 
especially upon a material metaphor, and the 
expression " point of view " hardly applies except 

L 



162 THE MEND AND THE BRAIN 



to the changes of perspective furnished by visible 
objects. 

It would be more exact to say that psychology 
specially studies certain objects of cognition, such 
as those which have the character of represen- 
tations (reminiscences, ideas, concepts), the emo- 
tions, the volitions, and the reciprocal influences 
of these objects among themselves. It studies, 
then, a part of the material world, of that world 
which till now has been called psychological, 
because it does not come under the senses, and 
because it is subjective and inaccessible to others 
than ourselves ; it studies the laws of those objects, 
which laws have been termed mental. 1 

These laws are not recognised, popularly speak- 
ing, either in physics or in biology ; they constitute 
for us a cognition apart from that of the natural 
world. Association by resemblance, for example, 
is a law of consciousness ; it is a psychological law 
which has no application nor counterpart in the 
world of physics or biology. We may therefore 
sum up what has been said by the statement that 

1 I am compelled, much against my will, to use throughout 
this passage an equivocal expression, that of 44 mental law," or 
law of consciousness, or psychological law. I indicate by this 
the laws of contiguity and of similarity ; as they result from 
the properties of the images, and as these are of a material 
nature, they are really physical and material laws like those of 
external nature. But how can all these laws be called physical 
laws without running the risk of confusing them one with the 
other ? 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 163 

psychology is the study of a certain number of 
laws, relations, and connections. 

As to the particular feature which distinguishes 
mental from physical laws, we can formulate 
it, as does William James, by saying that the 
essence of a mental law is to be teleological, 
or, if the phrase be preferred, we can say that 
mental activity is a finalistic activity, which ex- 
pends itself as will in the pursuit of future ends, 
and as intelligence in the choice of the means 
deemed capable of serving those ends. An act of 
intelligence is recognised by the fact of its aiming 
at an end, and employing for this end one means 
chosen out of many. Finality and intelligence 
are thus synonymous. In opposition to mental 
law, physical law is mechanical, by which expres- 
sion is simply implied the absence of finality. 
Finality opposed to mechanism ; such is the most 
concise and truest expression in which must be 
sought the distinctive attribute of psychology and 
of the moral sciences, the essential characteristic 
by which psychological are separated from physical 
facts. 

I think it may be useful to dwell a little on 
the mental laws which I have just opposed 
to the physical, and whose object is to assure 
preadaptation and form a finality. 1 Their im- 

1 Finality seems to be here used in the sense of the doctrine 
which regards perfection as the final cause of existence. — Ed. 



164 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

portance cannot be exaggerated. Thanks to his 
power of preadaptation, the being endowed with in- 
telligence acquires an enormous advantage over 
everything which does not reason. No doubt, 
as has been shrewdly remarked, natural selection 
resembles a finality, for it ends in an adaptation of 
beings to their surroundings. There is therefore, 
strictly speaking, such a thing as finality without 
intelligence. But the adaptation resulting there- 
from is a crude one, and proceeds by the elimina- 
tion of all that does not succeed in adapting 
itself; it is a butchery. Real finalism saves many 
deaths, many sufferings, and many abortions. 1 

Let us examine, then, the process of preadapta- 
tion ; it will enable us to thoroughly comprehend, 
not only the difference between the physical and the 
psychical laws, but the reason why the psychical 
manages in some fashion to mould itself upon the 
physical law. 

Now, the means employed by preadaptation is, 
if we take the matter in its simplest form, to be 
aware of sensations before they are experienced. 
If we reflect that all prevision implies a previous 
knowledge of the probable trend of events, it 
will be understood that the part played by in- 
telligence consists in becoming imbued with the 
laws of nature, for the purpose of imitating its 

1 See a very interesting article by E. Goblot, "La Finalite* 
sans Intelligence,' 1 Revue de Mttaphytiqut, July 1900. 



i 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 165 



workings. By the laws of nature, we understand 
here only that order of real sensations, the know- 
ledge of which is sufficient to fulfil the wants of 
practical life. To us there are always gaps in this 
order, because the sensation it is important for us 
to know is separated from us either by the barriers 
of time or of space, or by the complication of use- 
less sensations. Thence the necessity of interpo- 
lations. That which we do not perceive directly 
by our senses, we are obliged to represent to our- 
selves by our intelligence; the image does the 
work of sensation, and supplements the halting 
sensation in everything which concerns adapta- 
tion. 

To replace the inaccessible sensation by the cor- 
responding image, is therefore to create in ourselves 
a representation of the outer world which is, on 
all the points most useful to us, more complete 
than the direct and sensorial presentation of the 
moment. There is in us a power of creation, 
and this power exercises itself in the imitation 
of the work of nature ; it imitates its order, it 
reconstitutes on the small scale adapted to our 
minds, the great external order of events. Now, 
this work of imitation is only really possible if the 
imitator has some means at his disposal analogous 
to those of the model. 

Our minds could not divine the designs of 
nature, if the laws of images had nothing in 



166 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



common with the laws of nature. We are thus 
led to confront these two orders of laws with each 
other ; but, before doing so, one more preliminary 
word is necessary. We have up till now some- 
what limited the problem, in order to understand it. 
We have reduced the psychological being to one 
single function, the intellectual, and to one single 
object of research, the truth. This is, however, an 
error which has often been committed, which is now 
known and catalogued, called intellectualism, or 
the abuse of intellectualism. It is committed for 
this very simple reason, that it is the intellectual 
part of our being which best allows itself to be 
understood, and, so to speak, intellectualised. But 
this leaves out of the question a part of our entire 
mental being so important and so eminent, that if 
this part be suppressed, the intelligence would 
cease to work and would have no more utility 
than a machine without motive power. Our 
own motive power is the will, the feeling, or the 
tendency. Will is perhaps the most characteristic 
psychical function, since, as I have already had 
occasion to say, nothing analogous to it is met 
with in the world of nature. Let us therefore 
not separate the will from the intelligence, let 
us incarnate them one in the other ; and, instead 
of representing the function of the mind as having 
for its aim knowledge, foresight, the combination 
of means, and self-adaptation, we shall be much 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 167 

nearer the truth in representing to ourselves a 
being who wills to know, wills to foresee, and 
vritts to adapt himself, for, after all, he wills to 
live. 

Having said this, let us compare the psy- 
chological law and that of nature. Are they 
identical? We shall be told that they are not, 
since, as a fact, errors are committed at every 
moment by the sudden failures of human reason. 
This is the first idea which arises. Human error, 
it would seem, is the best proof that the two laws 
in question are not alike, and we will readily 
add that a falling stone does not mistake its 
way, that the crystal in the course of formation 
does not miss taking the crystalline shape, be- 
cause they form part of physical nature, and 
are subject in consequence to its determinism. 
But this is faulty reasoning, and a moment of 
reflection demonstrates it in the clearest pos- 
sible manner; for adaptation may miss its aim 
without the being who adapts himself and his 
surroundings necessarily obeying different laws. 
When the heat of a too early spring causes buds 
to burst forth prematurely which are afterwards 
destroyed by frost, there is produced a fault of 
adjustment which resembles an error of adap- 
tation, and the bringing forward of this error 
does not necessarily imply that the tree and the 
whole of physical nature are obeying different laws. 



168 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

Moreover, the difference between the laws of 
nature and those of the understanding does not 
need deduction by reasoning from an abstract 
principle; it is better to say that it is directly 
observable, and this is how I find that it pre- 
sents itself to us. 

The essential law of nature is relatively easy to 
formulate, as it is comprised in the very definition 
of law. It simply consists in the sentence: uni- 
formity under similar conditions. We might also 
say: a constant relation between two or several 
phenomena, which can also be expressed in a 
more abstract way by declaring that the law of 
nature rests on the combination of two notions, 
identity and constancy. 

On the other hand, the laws of our psychical 
activity partly correspond to the same tendencies, 
and it would be easy to demonstrate that the 
microcosm of our thoughts is governed by laws 
which are also an expression of these two com- 
bined notions of constancy and identity. It is, 
above all, in the working of the intellectual 
machine, the best known and the most clearly 
analysed up till now, that we see the application 
of this mental law which resembles, as we say, 
on certain sides, the physical law: and the best 
we can do for our demonstration will doubtless 
be to dissect our reasoning powers. Reason, a 
process essential to thought in action, is developed 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 169 

in accordance with a law which resembles in 
the most curious manner a physical law. It re- 
sembles it enough to imitate it, to conform to 
it, and, so to speak, to mould itself on it. 

Now, the reason does not follow the caprices 
of thought, it is subject to rules; it results 
from the properties of the images, those pro- 
perties which we have above referred to, the 
material character of which we have recognised, 
and which are two in number — similarity and 
contiguity, as they are termed in the jargon 
of the schools. They are properties which have 
for their aim to bring things together, to unite, 
and to synthetise. They are unceasingly at work, 
and so apparent in their labour that they 
have long been known. We know, since the 
time of Aristotle, that two facts perceived at the 
same time reproduce themselves together in the 
memory — this is the law of contiguity ; and that 
two facts perceived separately, but which are 
similar, are brought together in our mind — this 
is the law of similarity. 

Now, similarity and contiguity form by combina- 
tion the essential part of all kinds of reasoning, and 
this reasoning, thus understood, works in a fashion 
which much resembles (we shall see exactly in 
what degree) a physical law. I wish to show this 
in a few words. What renders my demonstration 
difficult and perhaps obscure is, that we shall 



170 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

be obliged to bring together rather unexpectedly 
categories of phenomena which are generally con- 
sidered separate. 

The distinctive attribute of the reason consists, 
as I have said, in the setting to work of these two 
elementary properties, similarity and contiguity. 
It consists, in fact, in extending continuity by 
similarity; in endowing with identical properties 
and similar accompaniments things which resemble 
each other ; in other words, it consists in impliedly 
asserting that the moment two things are identical 
in one point they are so for all the rest. This 
will be fairly well understood by imagining what 
takes place when mental images having the above- 
mentioned properties meet. Suppose that B is 
associated with C, and that A resembles B. In 
consequence of their resemblance the passing 
from A to B is easy ; and then B suggesting C by 
contiguity, it happens that this C is connected 
with A — connected, though, in reality, they have 
never been tried together. I say they are asso- 
ciated on the basis of their relation to B, which 
is the rallying point. It is thus that, on seeing 
a piece of red-hot iron (A), I conclude it is 
hot (C), because I recollect distinctly or uncon- 
sciously another piece of red-hot iron (B), of 
which I once experienced the heat. It is this 
recollection B which logicians, in their analysis 
of logical, verbal, and formal argument, call the 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 171 

middle term. Our representation of the process 
of reasoning is not special to argument. It also 
expresses the process of invention, and every kind 
of progress from the known to the unknown. It 
is an activity which creates relations, which 
assembles and binds together, and the connec- 
tions made between different representations are 
due to their partial identities, which act as 
solder to two pieces of metal 

It will now be understood that these relations 
between the images curiously resemble the external 
order of things, the order of our sensations, the 
order of nature, the physical law. This is because 
this physical law also has the same character 
and expresses itself similarly. We might say " all 
things which resemble each other have the same 
properties," or "all things alike on one point 
resemble each other on all other points." But 
immediately we do so, the difference between the 
physical and the mental law becomes apparent. 
The formula we have given is only true on con- 
dition that many restrictions and distinctions are 
made. 

The process of nature is so to do that the same 
phenomenon always unfolds itself in the same 
order. But this process is not always comprehended 
in real life, for it is hidden from our eyes by the 
manifold combinations of chance; in the reality 
that we perceive there is a crowd of phenomena 



172 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

which resemble each other but are not really 
the same. There are a number of phenomena 
which co-exist or follow each other without this 
order of co-existence or succession being necessary 
or constant. In other words, there are resem- 
blances which are the marks of something, as a 
logician would say, and others which are not the 
marks of anything ; there are relations of time and 
space which are the expression of a law ; there are 
some which are accidental, and may possibly never 
be reproduced. 

It would be a wonderful advantage if every 
scientific specialist would make out a list of the 
non-significant properties that he recognises in 
matter. The chemist, for example, would show 
us that specific weight has hardly any value in 
diagnosis, that the crystalline form of a salt is 
often not its own, that its colour especially is 
almost negligible because an immense number of 
crystals are white or colourless, that precipitation 
by a given substance does not ordinarily suffice 
to characterise a body, and so on. The botanist, 
on his part, would show us that, in determining 
plants, absolute dimension is less important than 
proportion, colour less important than form, cer- 
tain structures of organs less important than 
others. The pathologist would teach us that 
most pathological symptoms have but a trivial 
value ; the cries, the enervation, the agitation 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 173 



of a patient, even the delirium which so affects 
the bystanders, are less characteristic of fever 
than the rate of his pulse, and the latter less 
than the temperature of the armpit or the dry- 
ness of the tongue, &c. At every moment the 
study of science reveals resemblances of facts and 
contiguities of facts which must be neglected for 
the sake of others. And if we pass from this pro- 
found knowledge of the objects to the empirical 
knowledge, to the external perception of bodies, it 
is in immense number that one espies around one 
traps laid by nature. The sound we hear re- 
sembles several others, all produced by different 
causes; many of our visual sensations likewise 
lend themselves to the most varied interpreta- 
tions ; by the side of the efficient cause of an event 
we find a thousand entangled contingencies which 
appear so important that to disentangle them we 
are as much perplexed as the savage, who, unable 
to discriminate between causes and coincidences, 
returns to drink at the well which has cured him, 
carefully keeping to the same hour, the same 
gestures, and the same finery. 

The reason of this is that the faculty of simi- 
larity and the faculty of contiguity do not give 
the distinction, necessary as it is, between resem- 
blances and co-existences which are significant 
and those which are not. The causal nexus 
between two phenomena is not perceived as 



174 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

something apart and mi generis; it is not even 
perceived at all. We perceive only their relation 
in time and space, and it is our mind which 
raises a succession to the height of a causal con- 
nection, by intercalating between cause and effect 
something of what we ourselves feel when we 
voluntarily order the execution of a movement. 
This is not the place to inquire what are the 
experimental conditions in which we subject phe- 
nomena to this anthropomorphic transformation ; 
it will suffice for us to repeat here that, in per- 
ception, a chance relation between phenomena 
impresses us in the same way as when it is the 
expression of a law. 

Our intellectual machine sometimes works in 
accord with the external law and at others makes 
mistakes and goes the wrong way. Then we are 
obliged to correct it, and to try a better adjust- 
ment, either by profounder experimenting with 
nature (methods of concordance, discordance, varia- 
tions, &c), or by a comparison of different judg- 
ments and arguments made into a synthesis ; and 
this collaboration of several concordant activi- 
ties ends in a conclusion which can never repre- 
sent the truth, but only the probable truth. The 
study of the laws of the mind shows us too 
clearly, in fact, their fluidity with regard to 
the laws of nature for us not to accept prob- 
abilism. There exists no certitude — only very 



DEFINITIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY 175 

varied degrees of probability. Daily practice con- 
tents itself with a very low degree of probability ; 
judicial logic demands a rather higher one, espe- 
cially when it is a question of depriving one 
of our fellow-creatures of liberty or life. Science 
claims one higher still. But there is never any- 
thing but differences of degrees in probability and 
conjecture. 

This, then, is the definition of psychology 
that we propose. It studies a certain number 
of laws which we term mental, in opposition 
to those of external nature, from which they 
differ, but which, properly speaking, do not de- 
serve the qualification of mental, since they are 
— or at least the best known of them are — laws 
of the images, and the images are material ele- 
ments. Although it may seem absolutely para- 
doxical, psychology is a science of matter — the 
science of a part of matter which has the property 
of preadaptation. 




BOOK III 

THE UNION OF THE SOUL 1 AND 
THE BODY 

1 See note on p. 4. 



H 



CHAPTER I 



THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE 

The problem of the union of the mind and the 
body is not one of those which present themselves 
in pure speculation; it has its roots in experimen- 
tal facts, and is forced upon us by the necessity 
of explaining observations such as those we are 
about to quote. 

The force of our consciousness, the correctness 
of our judgments, our tempers and our characters, 
the state of health of our minds, and also their 
troubles, their weaknesses, and even their exist- 
ence, are all in a state of strict dependence on the 
condition of our bodies, more precisely with that 
of our nervous systems, or, more precisely still, 
with the state of those three pounds of proteid 
substance which each of us has at the back of his 
forehead, and which are called our brains. This is 
daily demonstrated by thousands upon thousands 
of observations. 

The question is to know how this union of the 

body with the consciousness is to be explained, it 

being assumed that the two terms of this union 

present a great difference in their nature. The 

179 



180 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

easier it seems to demonstrate that this union 
exists, the more difficult it appears to explain 
how it is realised ; and the proof of this difficulty 
is the number of divergent interpretations given 
to it. Were it a simple question of fact, the per- 
petual discussions and controversies upon it would 
not arise. 

Many problems here present themselves. The 
first is that of the genesis or origin of the 
consciousness. It has to be explained how a 
psychical phenomenon can appear in the midst 
of material ones. In general, one begins by 
supposing that the material phenomena are pro- 
duced first; they consist, for instance, in the 
working of the nervous centres. All this is phy- 
sical or chemical, and therefore material. Then at 
a given moment, after this mechanical process, 
a quite different phenomenon emerges. This is 
thought, consciousness, emotion. Then comes the 
question whether this production of thought in 
the midst of physical phenomena is capable of 
explanation, and how thought is connected with 
its physical antecedents. What is the nature 
of the link between them? Is it a relation of 
cause to effect, of genesis? or a coincidence? or 
the interaction of two distinct forces ? Is this 
relation constant or necessary? Can the mind 
enjoy an existence independent of the brain? Can 
it survive the death of the brain ? 



THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE 181 

The second question is that of knowing what 
is the role, the utility, and the efficacity of the 
psychical phenomenon. Once formed, this pheno- 
menon evolves in a certain direction and assumes 
to us who have consciousness of it a very great 
importance. What is its action on the material 
phenomena of the brain which surround it ? Does 
it develop according to laws of its own, which have 
no relation to the laws of brain action? Does 
it exercise any action on these intra-cerebral 
functions? Does it exercise any action on the 
centrifugal currents which go to the motor nerves? 
Is it capable of exciting a movement? or is it 
deprived of all power of creating effect ? 

We will briefly examine the principal solutions 
which the imagination of mankind has found for 
these very difficult problems. Some of the best 
known of these solutions bear the names of spiri- 
tualism, materialism, parallelism, and monism. 
We will speak of these and of some others also. 

Before beginning our critical statement, let us 
recall some of the results of our previous ana- 
lyses which here intrude themselves, to use the 
ambitious language of Kant, as the prolegomena 
to every future" solution which claims the title 
of science. In fact, we are now no longer at 
the outset of our investigation. We have had 
to acknowledge the exactness of certain facts, 
and we are bound to admit their consequences. 



1 82 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

Notably, the definition of psychical phenomena 
at which we arrived, not without some trouble, 
will henceforth play a rather large part in our 
discussion. It will force us to question a great 
metaphysical principle which, up till now, has 
been almost universally considered as governing 
the problem of the union of the mind with the 
body. 

This principle bears the name of the axiom 
of heterogeneity, or the principle of psycho- 
physical dualism. No philosopher has more 
clearly formulated it, and more logically deduced 
its consequences, than Flournoy. This author has 
written a little pamphlet called Mitaphysique et 
Psychologic, wherein he briefly sets forth all the 
known systems of metaphysics by reducing them 
to the so-called principle of heterogeneity; after 
this, the same principle enables him to " execute " 
them. He formulates it in the following terms : 
" body and mind, consciousness and the molecular 
cerebral movement of the brain, the psychical fact 
and the physical fact, although simultaneous, are 
heterogeneous, unconnected, irreducible, and ob- 
stinately two." 1 The same author adds : " this is 
evident of itself, and axiomatic. Every physi- 
cal, chemical, or physiological event, in the last 
resort, simply consists, according to science, in 
a more or less rapid displacement of a certain 
1 For reference, see note on p. 73.— Ed. 



THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE 183 



number of material elements, in a change of their 
mutual distances or of their modes of grouping. 
Now, what can there be in common, I ask you, 
what analogy can you see, between this drawing 
together or moving apart of material masses in 
space, and the fact of having a feeling of joy, the 
recollection of an absent friend, the perception of 
a gas jet, a desire, or of an act of volition of any 
kind? 11 And further on: "All that we can say 
to connect two events so absolutely dissimilar is, 
that they take place at the same time. . . . This 
does not mean that we wish to reduce them to 
unity, or to join them together by the link of 
causality ... it is impossible to conceive any real 
connection, any internal relation between these 
two unconnected things." 

Let us not hesitate to denounce as false this 
proposition which is presented to us as an axiom. 
On looking closely into it, we shall perceive that 
the principle of heterogeneity does not contain 
the consequences it is sought to ascribe to it. It 
seems to me it should be split up into two proposi- 
tions of very unequal value : 1, the mind and 
body are heterogeneous; 2, by virtue of this 
heterogeneity it is not possible to understand any 
direct relation between the two. 

Now, if the first proposition is absolutely correct, 
in the sense that consciousness and matter are 
heterogeneous, the second proposition seems to us 



184 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

directly contrary to the facts, which show us that 
the phenomena of consciousness are incomplete 
phenomena. The consciousness is not sufficient 
for itself; as we have said, it cannot exist by itself. 
This again, if you like, is an axiom, or rather it is 
a fact shown by observation and confirmed by 
reflection. Mind and matter brought down to the 
essential, to the consciousness and its object, form 
a natural whole, and the difficulty does not consist 
in uniting but in separating them. Consider the 
following fact : " I experience a sensation, and I 
have consciousness of it." This is the coupling of 
two things — a sensation and a cognition. 

The two elements, if we insist upon it, are 
heterogeneous, and they differ qualitatively; but 
notwithstanding the existing prejudice by reason 
of which no direct relation, no commerce, can be 
admitted between heterogeneous facts, the alliance 
of the consciousness and the sensation is the natural 
and primitive fact. They can only be separated by 
analysis, and a scrupulous mind might even ask 
whether one has the right to separate them. I 
have a sensation, and I have consciousness of it. 
If not two facts, they are one and the same. 
Now, sensation is matter and my consciousness is 
mind. If I am judging an assortment of stuffs, 
this assortment, or the sensation I have of them, 
is a particle of matter, a material state, and my 
judgment on this sensation is the psychical 



THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE 185 

phenomenon. We can neither believe, nor desire, 
nor do any act of our intelligence without realising 
this welding together of mind and matter. They 
are as inseparable as motion and the object that 
moves; and this comparison, though far-fetched, 
is really very convenient. Motion cannot exist 
without a mobile object; and an object, on the 
other hand, can exist without movement In the 
same way, sensation may exist without the con- 
sciousness ; but the converse proposition, conscious- 
ness without sensation, without an object, an 
empty consciousness or a " pure thought," cannot 
be understood. 

Let us mark clearly how this union is put 
forward by us. We describe it after nature. It is 
observation which reveals to us the union and the 
fusion of the two terms into one. Or, rather, we 
do not even perceive their union until the moment 
when, by a process of analysis, we succeed in con- 
vincing ourselves that that which we at first con- 
sidered single is really double, or, if you like, can 
be made into two by the reason, without being so 
in reality. Thus it happens that we bring this big 
problem in metaphysics on to the field of observa- 
tion. 

Our solution vaguely resembles that which has 
sometimes been presented under the ancient name 
of physical influx, or under the more modern 
name of inter-actionism. There are many authors 



186 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



who maintain that the soul can act directly on the 
body and modify it, and this is what is called 
inter - actionism. Thereby is understood, if I 
mistake not, an action from cause to effect, 
produced between two terms which enjoy a cer- 
tain independence with regard to each other. 
This interpretation is indubitably close to ours, 
though not to be confused with it. My personal 
interpretation sets aside the idea of all independ- 
ence of the mind, since it attributes to the mind an 
incomplete and, as it were, a virtual existence. 

If we had to seek paternity for ideas I would 
much rather turn to Aristotle. It was not without 
some surprise that I was able to convince myself 
that the above theory of the relations between the 
soul and the body is to be found almost in its 
entirety in the great philosopher. It is true that 
it is mixed up with many accessory ideas which 
are out of date and which we now reject ; but the 
essential of the theory is there very clearly for- 
mulated, and that is the important point A few 
details on this subject will not be out of place. 
I give them, not from the original source, which I 
am not erudite enough to consult direct, but from 
the learned treatise which Bain has published on 
the psychology of Aristotle, as an appendix to his 
work on the Senses and the Intelligence. 

The whole metaphysics of Aristotle is dominated 
by the distinction between form and matter. This 



THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE 187 



distinction is borrowed from the most familiar fact 
in the sensible world — the form of solid objects. 
We may name a substance without troubling our- 
selves as to the form it possesses, and we may 
name the form without regard to the substance 
that it clothes. But this distinction is a purely 
abstract one, for there can be no real separation 
of form from matter, no form without matter, 
and no matter without form. The two terms 
are correlative; each one implies the other, and 
neither can be realised or actualised without the 
other. Every individual substance can be con- 
sidered from a triple point of view: 1st, form; 
2nd, matter ; and 3rd, the compound or aggregate 
of form and matter, the inseparable Ens, which 
transports us out of the domain of logic and 
abstraction into that of reality. 

Aristotle recognises between these two logical 
correlatives a difference in rank. Form is 
superior, nobler, the higher in dignity, nearer to 
the perfect entity ; matter is inferior, more modest, 
more distant from perfection. On account of its 
hierarchical inferiority, matter is often presented 
as the second, or correlatum, and form as the first, 
or relatum. This difference in rank is so strongly 
marked, that those two correlations are likewise 
conceived in a different form — that of the poten- 
tial and the actual Matter is the potential, 
imperfect, roughly outlined element which is 



1 88 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

not yet actual, and may perhaps never become so. 
Form is the actual, the energy, the entelechy which 
actualises the potential and determines the final 
compound. 

These few definitions will make clear the 
singularly ingenious idea of Aristotle on the 
nature of the body, the soul, and of their union. 
The body is matter which is only intelligible as 
the correlatum of form; it can neither exist by 
itself nor be known by itself — that is to say, when 
considered outside this relation. The soul is form, 
the actual. By uniting with the body it consti- 
tutes the living subject The soul is the relcUum, 
and is unintelligible and void of sense without 
its correlatum. "The soul," says Aristotle, "is 
not a variety of body, but it could not exist with- 
out a body : the soul is not a body, but something 
which belongs or is relative to a body." The 
animated subject is a form plunged and engaged 
in matter, and all its actions and passions are so 
likewise. Each has its formal side which concerns 
the soul, and its material side which concerns the 
body. The emotion which belongs to the ani- 
mated subject or aggregate of soul and body is 
a complex fact having two aspects logically 
distinguishable from each other, each of which 
is correlative to the other and implies it. It is 
thus not only with our passions, but also with 
our perceptions, our imaginations, reminiscences, 



THE MIND HAS AN INCOMPLETE LIFE 189 

reasonings, and efforts of attention to learn. In- 
telligence, like emotion, is a phenomenon not 
simply of the corporeal organism nor of the Now 
only, but of the commonalty or association of 
which they are members, and when the intelli- 
gence weakens it is not because the N0O9 is altered, 
but because the association is destroyed by the 
ruin of the corporeal organism. 

These few notes, which I have taken in their 
integrity from Bain's text, allow us thoroughly to 
comprehend the thought of Aristotle, and it seems 
to me that the Greek philosopher, by making of 
the soul and body two correlative terms, has formed 
a comparison of great exactness. I also much 
admire his idea according to which it is through 
the union of the body and soul that the whole, 
which till then was only possible, goes forth from 
the domain of logic and becomes actual. The 
soul actualises the body, and becomes, as he said, 
its entelechy. 

These views are too close to those I have 
myself just set forth for it to be necessary to dwell 
on their resemblance. The latter would become 
still stronger if we separated from the thought of 
Aristotle a few developments which are not essen- 
tial, though he allowed them great importance: 
I refer to the continual comparison he makes 
with the form and matter of corporeal objects. 
Happy though it may be, this comparison is but 



190 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

a metaphor which perhaps facilitates the under- 
standing of Aristotle's idea, but is not essential 
to hi* theory. For my part, I attach far greater 
importance to the character of rdatum and cor- 
rdatum ascribed to the two terms mind and 
matter, and to the actualisation 1 produced by 
their union. 

Let me add another point of comparison. Aris- 
totle's theory recalls in a striking manner that of 
Kant on the a priori forms of thought. The form 
of thought, or the category, is nothing without the 
matter of cognition, and the latter is nothing 
without the application of form. "Thoughts 
without content given by sensation are empty; 
intuitions without concept furnished by the under- 
standing are blind." There is nothing astonishing 
in finding here the same illustration, since there 
is throughout a question of describing the same 
phenomenon, — the relation of mind to matter. 

There remains to us to review the principal 
types of metaphysical systems. We shall discuss 
these by taking as our guide the principle we have 
just evolved, and which may be thus formulated : 
The phenomena of consciousness constitute an 
incomplete mode of existence. 

1 i.e. rendering actual. — Ed. 



CHAPTER II 



SPIRITUALISM 1 AND IDEALISM 

Flournoy has somewhere written that the chief 
interest of the systems of metaphysics lies less 
in the intellectual constructions they raise than 
in the aspirations of the mind and of the heart 
to which they correspond. Without taking liter- 
ally this terribly sceptical opinion, it would be 
highly useful to begin the study of any meta- 
physical system by the psychology of its author. 
The value of each system would be better under- 
stood, and their reasons would be comprehended. 

This book is too short to permit us to enter into 
such biographical details. I am obliged to take 
the metaphysical systems en bloc, as if they were 
anonymous works, and to efface all the shades, 
occasionally so curious, that the thought of each 
author has introduced into them. Yet, however 
brief our statement, it seems indispensable to in- 

1 It is, perhaps, needless to point out that by " spiritualism '* 
M. Binet does not mean the doctrine of the spirit-rappers, whom 
he, like other scientific writers, designates as 11 spiritists," but 
the creed of all those who believe in disembodied spirits or 
existences. — Ed. 

X91 

/ 



192 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

dicate clearly the physical or moral idea concealed 
within each system. 

Spiritualism 

It is known that spiritualism is a doctrine 
which has for its chief aim the raising of the 
dignity of man, by recognising in him faculties 
superior to the properties of matter. We con- 
stantly meet, in spiritualism, with the notion of 
superior and inferior, understood not only in an 
intellectual sense but also in the sense of moral 
worth. 

It will also be remarked, as a consequence of 
the above principle, that a spiritualist does not 
confine himself to discussing the ideas of his 
habitual adversary, the materialist ; he finds them 
not only false, but dangerous, and is indignant with 
them; some persons even ingenuously acknow- 
ledge that they hold firmly to certain principles 
because they fear to be converted to materialism. 
I can also discern in this system a very natural 
horror of death, which inspires in so many people, 
of whom I am one, both hatred and disgust. 
The spiritualist revolts against the prospect of a 
definitive annihilation of thought, and the system 
he adopts is largely explained as an effort towards 
immortality. 

This effort has led to the theory of two sub- 
stances, the soul and the body, which are re- 



SPIRITUALISM AND IDEALISM 193 

presented as being as thoroughly separated as 
possible. The soul has not its origin in the body, 
and it derives none of its properties from its 
fellow ; it is a substance created in complete in- 
dependence relatively to the body; the soul, in 
its essence, has nothing in common with matter. 
The essence of the soul, said Descartes, is thought; 
the essence of the body is extent. It follows 
from this that the soul, in its determinations and 
actions, is liberated from the laws and neces- 
sities of the corporeal nature ; it is a free power, 
a power of indetermination, capable of choice, cap- 
able of introducing new, unforeseen, and unfore- 
seeable actions, and on this point opposes itself to 
corporeal phenomena, which are all subject to a 
determinism so rigorous that any event could be 
foreseen if its antecedents were known. Another 
consequence of spiritualism is the admission of 
the immortality of the soul, which, being widely 
distinct from the body, is not affected by its dis- 
solution; it is, on the contrary, liberated, since 
death cuts the link which binds them together. 

But there is a link, and the explanation of this 
link brings with it the ruin of the whole system. 
One is forced to admit that this principle of the 
separation of body and soul is liable, in fact, to 
many exceptions. Even if they are two isolated 
powers, the necessities of life oblige them to enter 
continually into communication with each other. 

N 



194 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

In the case of perceptions, it is the body which 
acts on the soul and imparts sensations to it; 
in movements, it is the soul, on the contrary, 
which acts on the body, to make it execute its 
desires and its will. 

Spiritualists must acknowledge that they are 
at some trouble to explain this traffic between 
the two substances ; for, with their respect for the 
principle of heterogeneity mentioned above, they 
do not manage to conceive how that contact 
of the physical and the mental can be made 
which is constantly necessary in the life of rela- 
tion. By what means, have they long asked them- 
selves, can that which is only extent act on that 
which is only thought ? How can we represent to 
ourselves this local union of matter; with an im- 
material principle, which, by its essence, does not 
exist in space ? The two substances have been so 
completely separated, to insure the liberty of the 
soul and its superiority over the body, that it has 
become impossible to bring them together. The 
scission has been too complete. They cannot be 
sewn together again. 

Such are the principal objections raised against 
spiritualism. These objections are derived from 
points of view which are not ours, and we have 
therefore no need to estimate their value. 

From our point of view, the spiritualist con- 
ception has chosen an excellent starting point. By 




SPIRITUALISM AND IDEALISM 195 

establishing the consciousness and the object of 
cognition as two autonomous powers, neither of 
which is the slave of the other, spiritualism has 
arrived at an opinion of irreproachable exact- 
ness; it is indeed thus that the relations of 
these two terms must be stated; each has 
the same importance and the right to the 
same autonomy. 1 

Yet, spiritualism has not rested there, and, by 
a lamentable exaggeration, it has thought that the 
consciousness, which it calls the soul, could exer- 
cise its functions in complete independence of the 
object of cognition, which it calls matter. There 
is the error. It consists in misunderstanding the 
incomplete and, as it were, virtual existence of 
the consciousness. This refutation is enough as 
regards spiritualism. Nothing more need be 
added. 

Idealism 

Idealism is an exceedingly complex system, 
varying much with varying authors, very polymor- 
phous, and consequently very difficult to discuss. 

The ancient hylozoism, the monadism of Leib- 
nitz, and the recent panpsychism of M. Strong 
are only different forms of the same doctrine. 

1 I do not insist on the difference between my conception and 
the spiritualistic conception ; my distinction between conscious- 
ness and matter does not correspond, it is evident, to that of 
M facts of consciousness" and "physical facts" which spiri- 
tualism sets up. 



196 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

Like spiritualism, with which it is connected by 
many ties, idealism is a philosophy which ex- 
presses some disdain for matter, but the thoughts 
which have sought to shelter themselves under 
this philosophy are so varied that it would be 
perilous to try to define them briefly. 

There can be discussed in idealism a certain 
number of affirmations which form the basis of 
the system. None of these affirmations is, strictly 
speaking, demonstrated or demonstrable; but they 
offer very different degrees of probability, and it 
is for this reason that we shall notice them. 

Amongst these affirmations there are some that 
we have already met with in our study of the 
definition of sensation; others will be newer 
to us. 

i. Here is one which seems to arise directly 
from the facts, and appears for a long time to 
have constituted an impregnable position for 
idealists. It may be expressed in three words: 
esse est percipi. 

Starting with the observation that every time 
we bear witness to the existence of the external 
world, it is because we perceive it, idealists admit 
that the existence of this external world shares 
exactly the lot of our perception, and that like it 
it is discontinuous and intermittent. When we 
close our eyes, it ceases to exist, like a torch which 
is extinguished, and lights up again when we open 



SPIRITUALISM AND IDEALISM 197 

them. We have already discussed this proposi- 
tion, and have shown that it contains nothing 
imperative; and we may very well decline to 
subscribe to it. 

2. There follows a second proposition, barely 
distinct from the previous one. There should 
be nothing else in objects but that which we 
perceive, and that of which we have consciousness 
should be, in the fullest possible acceptation of 
the words, the measure of what is. Consequently 
there should be no need to seek, under the object 
perceived, another and larger reality, a source 
from which might flow wider knowledge than 
that we at present possess. This is as disputable 
as the preceding affirmation, and for the same 
reasons. 

3. The third proposition is the heart of the 
idealist thesis. It is sometimes presented as a 
deduction from the foregoing, but it is neverthe- 
less thoroughly distinct from it, and the preceding 
affirmations might legitimately be accepted and 
this new one rejected. This proposition may be 
expressed thus : Everything that is perceived is 
psychical. 

It is not only idealists who subscribe to this 
opinion, however, and we have seen, when dealing 
with the definition of matter, that it is widely 
spread. We understand by it that the objects we 
perceive exist in the consciousness, are of the 



i 9 8 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

consciousness, and are constituted by ideas; the 
whole world is nothing but idea and representa- 
tion; and, since our mind is taken to be of a 
psychical nature, the result is that everything, 
absolutely everything, the person who knows and 
the thing known, are all psychical. This is 
panpsychism. Flournoy, on this point, says, with 
a charm coloured by irony: "We henceforth 
experience a sweet family feeling, we find our- 
selves, so to speak, at home in the midst of this 
universe . . 1 We have demonstrated above 
that the unity here attained is purely verbal, 
since we cannot succeed in suppressing the essen- 
tial differences of things. 

4. Now comes an affirmation on the genesis 
of things. After having admitted that the object 
is an idea of the mind, one of its manifestations, 
or one of its moods, the idealists go so far as to say 
that the consciousness is the generating power of 
ideas, and, consequently, the generating cause of 
the universe. It is thought which creates the 
world. That is the final conclusion. 

I indicated, beforehand, in the chapters on the 
definition of sensation and on the distinction 
between the consciousness and the object, the 
reasons which lead me to reject the premises of 
idealism. It will be sufficient to offer here a 

1 Archives de Psychologic, vol. iv. No. 14, Nov. 1904, p. 132 
(article on PanpeychUm). 



SPIRITUALISM AND IDEALISM 199 

criticism on its last conclusion : " It is the mind 
that creates the world." 

This thesis strikes at the duality — conscious- 
ness and object; it gives the supremacy to the 
consciousness by making of the object an effect or 
property of the former. We can object that this 
genesis cannot be clearly represented, and that 
for the very simple reason that it is impossible to 
clearly accept "mind" as a separate entity and 
distinct from matter. It is easy to affirm this 
separation, thanks to the psittacism of the words, 
which are here used like counterfeit coin, but we 
cannot represent it to ourselves, for it corresponds 
to nothing. The consciousness constitutes all 
that is mental in the world; nothing else can 
be described as mental. Now this consciousness \ 
only exists as an act ; it is, in other terms, an ^ 
incomplete form of existence, which does not exist v 
apart from its object, of which the true name is 
matter. It is therefore very difficult to under- 
stand this affirmation, "It is the mind that 
creates the world," since to be able to do so, we 
should have to imagine a consciousness without 
an object. 

Moreover, should we even succeed in doing so, 
we should be none the more disposed, on that 
account, to give assent to this proposition. Con- 
sciousness and N matter represent to us the most 
different and antithetical terms of the whole of the 



200 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

knowable. Were the hypothesis to be advanced 
that one of these elements is capable of engender- 
ing the other, we should immediately have to ask 
ourselves why this generating power and this pre- 
eminence should be attributed to one rather 
than to the other element. Who can claim that 
one solution is more clear, more reasonable, or 
more probable than the other ? 

One of the great advantages of the history of 
philosophy here asserts itself. This history shows 
us that different minds when reflecting on the 
same problems have come to conceive solutions 
which have appeared to them clear, and con- 
sequently were possible ; now, as these solutions 
are often contradictory, nothing shows better 
than their collation the distance between possi- 
bility and fact. Thus the materialists, who, like 
the idealists, have put forward a genetic theory 
of the mind, have conceived mind as produced 
by matter; — a conception diametrically opposed to 
that of the idealists. It may be said that these 
two conceptions, opposed in sense, annul each 
other, and that each of these two philosophical 
systems has rendered us service by demonstrating 
the error of the opposing system. 



CHAPTER III 



materialism and parallelism 

Materialism 

Materialism is a very ancient doctrine. It is even 
the most ancient of all, which simply proves that 
amongst the different explanations given of our 
double physico-mental nature, this doctrine is the 
easiest to understand. The origin of materialism 
is to be found in the beliefs of savage tribes, and is 
again found, very clearly defined, in the philosophy 
of those ancient Greeks who philosophized before 
Plato and Aristotle. A still stranger fact is that 
the thoughts of a great number of the Fathers 
of the Church inclined towards the philosophy 
of matter. Then, in the course of its evolution, 
there occurred a moment of eclipse, and materi- 
alism ceased to attract attention till the con- 
temporary period in which we assist at its 
re-birth. Nowadays, it constitutes a powerful 
doctrine, the more so that it has surreptitiously 
crept into the thoughts of many learned men 
without their being clearly conscious of it. There 
are many physicists and physiologists who think 

aoi 



202 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



and speak as materialists, though they have made 
up their minds to remain on the battle-ground of 
observed facts and have a holy horror of meta- 
physics. In a certain sense, it may be said that 
materialism is the metaphysics of those who refuse 
to be metaphysicians. 

It is very evident that in the course of its long 
history, materialism has often changed its skin. 
Like all knowledge, it has been subject to the law 
of progress ; and, certainly, it would not have been 
of a nature to satisfy the intellectual wants of 
contemporary scholars, had it not stripped itself 
of the rude form under which it first manifested 
itself in the mind of primitive man. Yet what 
has enabled the doctrine to keep its unity through 
all its changes is that it manifests a deeply human 
tendency to cling by preference to everything visible 
and tangible. 

Whatever strikes the eyes, or can be felt by the 
hand, seems to us in the highest degree endowed 
with reality or existence. It is only much later, 
after an effort of refined thought, that we come to 
recognise an existence in everything that can be 
perceived in any way whatever, even in an idea. 
It is still later that we understand that existence 
is not only that which is perceived but also that 
which is linked logically with the rest of our 
knowledge. A good deal of progress has been 
necessary to reach this point. 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 203 

As I have not the slightest intention of giving 
even an abridged history of materialism, let us 
come at once to the present day, and endeavour 
to say in what consists the scientific form this 
doctrine has assumed. Its fundamental basis has 
not changed. It still rests on our tendency to 
give chief importance to what can be seen and 
touched; and it is an effect of the hegemony 
of three of our senses, the visual, the tactile, and 
the muscular. 

The extraordinary development of the physical 
sciences has no doubt given an enormous encour- 
agement to materialism, and it may be said that 
in the philosophy of nature it occupies, a principal 
place, and that it is there in its own domain 
and unassailable. 

It has become the expression of the idea that 
everything that can be explained scientifically, 
everything susceptible of being measured, is a 
material phenomenon. It is the representation 
of the material explanation pushed to its last 
limits, and all experiments, all calculations, all 
inductions resting on the grand principle of the 
conservation of matter and energy plead in its 
favour. 

We will examine with some precision how far 
such a doctrine solves the problem of the exist- 
ence of the intellectual functions. 

The doctrine has understood this connection as 



2o 4 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

being purely material, and has sought its image in 
other phenomena which are entirely so. Thus, it 
has borrowed from physiology the principle of its 
explanation, it has transported into the domain of 
thought the idea of function, and it has supposed 
that the soul is to the body in the relation of 
function to organ. Intelligence would thus be 
a cerebral function. To explain intelligence, 
materialists link it with matter, turn it into a 
property of matter, and compare it to a move- 
ment of matter, and sometimes even to a secretion. 
So Karl Vogt, the illustrious Genevan naturalist, 
one day declared, to the great scandal of every 
one, that the brain secretes the thought as the 
kidney does urine. This bold comparison seemed 
shocking, puerile, and false, for a secretion is a 
material thing while thought is not. Karl Vogt 
also employed another comparison: the brain 
produces the thought as the muscle produces 
movement, and it at once seems less offensive to 
compare the thought to a movement than to 
compare it to -a liquid secretion. At the present 
day, an illustration still more vague would be 
used, such as that of a transformation of energy : 
chemical energy disengaged by the nerve centres 
would be thus looked upon as transformed into 
psychical energy. 

However, it matters little what metaphors are 
applied to for help in explaining the passage from 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 205 

the physical to the mental. What characterises 
materialist philosophy is its belief in the possi- 
bility of such a passage, and its consider ing it as 
the genesis of thought. " One calls materialist," 
says Renouvier, with great exactness, "every philo- 
sophy which defines thought as the product 
of a compound whose elements do not imply 
thought." A sweeping formula which allows us 
to foresee all the future avatars of the mate- 
rialist doctrine, and to class them beforehand 
in the same category. 

The criticisms which have been directed against 
materialism are all, or nearly all, variations of the 
principle of heterogeneity" We will not dwell 
long on this, but simply recollect that, accord- 
ing to this principle, it is impossible to attribute 
to the brain the capacity of generating conscious- 
ness. Physical force can indeed generate physi- 
cal force under the same or a different form, 
and it thus produces all the effects which are 
determined by the laws of nature. But it is im- 
possible to comprehend how physical force can 
enrich itself at a given moment by a conscious 
force. Physical force is reduced to movements 
of bodies and to displacements of atoms; how 
could a change of position in any inert objects 
give rise to a judgment, a reasoning, or any 
phenomenon of the consciousness ? It is further 
said: this idea of function, which materialists 



206 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

here introduce to render more comprehensible 
the passage from a material body to a spiritual 
action, contains only an empty explanation, for 
the function is not essentially distinct by its 
nature from the organ; it is simply "the 
organ in activity," it adds to the organ taken 
in a state of repose but one change, viz. activity, 
that is to say movement, and, consequently, the 
function of an organ is material by the same right 
as the organ. When a muscle contracts, this 
contraction, which is the proper function of the 
muscular fibre, consists in a condensation of the 
muscular protoplasm, and this condensation is a 
material fact. When a gland enters into activity, 
a certain quantity of liquid flows into the channels 
of the gland, and this liquid is caused by a physical 
and chemical modification of the cellular proto- 
plasm; it is a melting, or a liquefaction, which 
likewise is material. The function of the nerve 
cell is to produce movement, or to preserve it, or 
to direct it; it is material like the cells. There 
is therefore nothing in all these functional pheno- 
mena which might lead us to understand how a 
material cause should be capable of engendering a 
conscious effect. 

It seems that all materialists have acknowledged 
that here is the vulnerable point in their theory, 
for it is the principle of heterogeneity which they 
have especially combated. But their defence is 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 207 

wanting in frankness, and principally consists in 
subterfuges. 

In brief, it affirms that we are surrounded 
with mystery, that we are not sufficiently learned 
to have the right to impose limits to the 
power of matter, and to say to it : " Thou shalt 
not produce this phenomenon." A materialist 
theologian declares that he sees no impossibility 
in stones thinking and arguing, if Ood, in His 
infinite power, has decided to unite thought with 
brute matter. This argument is not really serious ; 
it demands the intervention of so powerful a Deus 
ex machina, that it can be applied equally to all 
problems ; to solve all is to solve none. 

Modern materialists rightly do not bring God 
into the question. Their mode of argument takes 
another form; but it remains to be seen if, at 
bottom, it is not the same as the other. It simply 
consists in affirming that up till now we know 
certain properties of matter only, but that science 
every day discovers new ones; that matter is a 
reservoir of unknown forces, and that it is not 
impossible that the origin of psychical forces may 
yet be discovered in matter. This idea is clearly 
hinted at by Littr6. The physicist Tyndall gave it 
a definite formula when he uttered at the Belfast 
Congress this phrase so often quoted : " If I look 
back on the limits of experimental science, I 
can discern in the bosom of that matter (which, 



208 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

in our ignorance, while at the same time pro- 
fessing our respect for its Creator, we have, till 
now, treated with opprobrium) the promise and 
the power of all forms and qualities of life." 

The opponents of the doctrine have not ceased 
to answer that the matter of to-morrow, like the 
matter of to-day, can generate none but material 
effects, and that a difficulty is not solved by 
putting off its solution to some indefinite date 
in our scientific evolution : and it certainly seems 
that the counter-stroke is decisive, if we admit 
the principle of heterogeneity with its natural 
consequence. 

We will now criticise the above doctrine by 
making use of the ideas I have above enunciated. 
The criticism we have to apply to materialism is 
not the same as that just summarised. The axis 
of the discussion changes its position. 

In the first place, I reproach materialism with 
presenting itself as a theory of the generation of the 
consciousness by the object. We have already re- 
proached idealism with putting itself forward as a 
theory of the generation of the object by the con- 
sciousness. The error of the two systems is produced 
in a converse direction, but is of the same gravity. 
The consciousness and its object, we say yet again, 
constitute the widest division it is possible to 
effect in the domain of cognition; it is quite as 
illegitimate to reduce the first term to the second 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 209 

as to reduce the second to the first. To reduce 
one to the other, by way of affiliation or otherwise, 
there must first be discovered, then, an identity 
of nature which does not exist. 

In the second place, when one examines closely 
the explanation materialism has imagined in order 
to derive thought from an action of matter, it is 
seen that this representation is rendered com- 
pletely impossible by all we know of the nature 
of thought. For the materialist to suppose for 
one moment that thought is a cerebral function, 
he must evidently make an illusion for himself 
as to what thought is, and must juggle with con- 
cepts. Perhaps, could we penetrate into his own 
inmost thought, we should discover that at the 
moment he supposes a mere cell can manufacture 
the phenomena of consciousness, some vague image 
suggests itself to him whereby he identifies these 
phenomena with a light and subtle principle 
escaping from the nerve cell, something which 
resembles an electric effluve, or a will-of-the-wisp, 
or the flame from a punch-bowl. 1 

I cannot, of course, tell whether my supposition 
is correct. But what I assert, with the calmness 

1 I can quote two observations in support of this. M. Brieux, 
to whom I was relating this part of my argument, stopped me, 
saying, 44 Tou have guessed right ; I represent to myself thought 
issuing from brain in the form of an electric gleam." Dr. 
Simon also informed me, during the reading of my manuscript, 
that he saw 44 thought floating over the brain like an ignis 
fatuut." 

O 



2io THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

of perfect certitude, is that the materialist has 
not taken the pains to analyse attentively what 
he calls the phenomenon of consciousness. Had 
he made this analysis and kept the elements in 
his mind, he would have seen that it is almost 
impossible to hook in any way a phenomenon of 
consciousness on to a material molecule. 

In fact, also, to take this into account, we will 
not remain within the vagueness of the concept, but 
will take a particular example to argue upon, viz. 
that of an external perception. I open my window 
on a fine day, and I see before me a sunny plain, 
with, as far as the eye can reach, houses amongst the 
trees, and again more houses, the most distant of 
which are outlined against my far-off horizon. 
This is my mental phenomenon. And while I am 
at my window, my eyes fixed on the view, the 
anatomist declares that, starting from my retina, 
molecular vibrations travel along the optic nerve, 
cross each other at the chiasma, enter into the 
fascia, pass through the internal capsule and 
reach the hemispheres, or rather the occipital 
regions, of the brain, where, for the moment, we 
agree to localise the centre of projection of the 
visual sensations. This is my physical pheno- 
menon. It now becomes the question of passing 
from this physical phenomena to the mental one. 
And here we are stopped by a really formidable 
difficulty. 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 211 

My mental phenomenon is not entirely mental, 
as is usually supposed from the deceitful brevity 
of the phrase. It is in great part physical, for it 
can be decomposed into two elements, a conscious- 
ness and its object; and this object of the con- 
sciousness, this group of little houses I see in the 
plain, belongs to sensation — that is to say, to 
something physical — or, in other words, to matter. 

Let us examine in its turn the physical process 
which is supposed to be discovered in my nervous 
centres while I am in course of contemplating the 
landscape. This pretended physical process itself, 
quite as much as my conscious perception of the 
landscape, is a physico-psychical phenomenon; 
for my cerebral movements are perceived, hypo- 
thetically at least, by an observer. This is a 
perception, consequently it can be decomposed 
into two things, a consciousness and its object. 
As a further consequence, when we wish, by a 
metaphysical effort, to attach the consciousness 
to a material state of the brain and to establish 
a link between the two events, it will be found 
that we wrongly hook one physico-mental pheno- 
menon on to another. 

But, evidently, this objection is not a refuta- 
tion. We may if we choose suppose that the so- 
called cerebral process is capable of subsisting at 
moments when no one perceives it, and that it 
exists of itself, is sufficient for itself, and is entirely 



212 



THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



physical But can we subject the mental process 
of perception to the same purification? Can we 
separate these two elements, the consciousness and 
its object, retain the element consciousness and 
reject the element object, which is physical, thus 
constituting a phenomenon entirely mental, which 
might then be possibly placed beside the entirely 
physical phenomenon, so as to study their relation 
to each other ? This is quite impossible, and the 
impossibility is double, for it exists de facto and de 
jure. 

De jure, because we have already established 
that a consciousness empty and without object 
cannot be conceived. De facto, because the exist- 
ence of the object that consciousness carries with 
it is very embarrassing for the materialist; for 
this object is material, and as real and material as 
the fibres and cells of the brain. It might, indeed, 
be supposed that by transformation or otherwise 
there goes forth from the cerebral convolution a 
purely psychical phenomenon resembling a wave. 
But how can we conceive the transformation of 
this convolution into a semi-material pheno- 
menon? How can we comprehend that there 
should issue from this convolution the material 
object of a perception — for example, a plain dotted 
with houses ? 

An English histologist remarked one day, with 
some eloquence, how little the most minute study 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 213 



of the brain aided us to understand thought. 
He was thus answering Auguste Comte, who, in 
a moment of aberration, claimed that psychology, 
in order to become a science, ought to reject the 
testimony of the consciousness, and to use ex- 
clusively as its means of study the histology of 
the nerve centres and the measurement of the 
cranium. Our histologist, who had passed part of 
his life examining, under the microscope, frag- 
ments of cerebral matter, in following the forms of 
the cells, the course of the fibres, and the grouping 
and distribution of the fascia, made the following 
remark : " It is the fact that the study, however 
patient, minute, and thorough it might be, of this 
nerve-skein can never enable us to know what a 
state of consciousness is, if we do not know it other- 
wise ; for never across the field of the microscope 
is there seen to pass a memory, an emotion, or an 
act of volition." And, he added, " he who confines 
himself to peering into these material structures 
remains as ignorant of the phenomena of the 
mind as the London cabman who, for ever tra- 
velling through the streets of the great city, is 
ignorant of what is said and what is going on 
in the interior of the houses." This picturesque 
comparison, the truth of which has never been 
questioned, is based on this supposition, that the 
psychical act is entirely immaterial and invisible, 
and therefore escapes the piercing eye of the 



214 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

microscope. But a deeper analysis of the mind 
shows how little exact is this assertion. From 
the moment each psychical act implies a material 
object, we can ask ourselves two things: (i) Why 
is it that the anatomist does not discover these 
material objects in the interior of the brain? 
We ought to see them, for they are material, 
and therefore visible. We ought to see them 
with their aspect and colour, or be able to explain 
why they are not seen. In general, all that is 
described to us in the brain is the molecular 
vibrations. But we are not conscious of them. 
Where, then, is that of which we are con- 
scious? (2) It should next be explained to us 
by what elaboration, transmutation, or metamor- 
phosis a molecular disturbance, which is material, 
can transform itself into the objects which are 
equally material. 

This is the criticism we have to address to 
materialism. Until proof to the contrary, I hold 
it to be irrefutable. 

Parallelism 

For this exposition to follow the logical order 
of ideas, the discussion on materialism should 
be immediately succeeded by that on parallelism. 
These two doctrines are near akin ; they resemble 
each other as the second edition of a book, revised 
and corrected, resembles the first Parallelism 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 215 

is the materialist doctrine of those forewarned 
folk, who have perceived the errors committed 
and endeavour to avoid them, while cherishing 
all that can be saved of the condemned doctrine. 
That which philosophers criticised in materialism 
was the misunderstanding of the principle of 
heterogeneity. The parallelists have seen this 
mistake, and have taken steps to respect this 
principle: we shall see in what way. They are 
especially prudent, and they excel in avoiding 
being compromised. They put forth their hypo- 
thesis as a provisional one, and they vaunt its 
convenience. It is, say they, a practical method 
of avoiding many difficulties; it becomes for 
philosophers an equivalent of that phrase which 
so many timorous ministers repeat: "Above all, 
no scrapes ! " 

Let us study the exact point on which paral- 
lelism has amended materialism. We have seen 
that every materialist doctrine is the expression 
of this idea, that physical phenomena are the only 
ones that are determined, measurable, explicable, 
and scientific. This idea does wonders in the 
natural sciences, but is at fault when, from 
the physical, we pass into the moral world, 
and we have seen how the materialistic doctrine 
fails when it endeavours to attach the physical 
to the mental. There are then two great diffi- 
culties which the materialistic explanation finds 



216 



THE BOND AND THE BRAIN 



before it ; one is a difficulty of mechanism and 
the other of genesis. By connecting the mind 
with the brain, like a function to its organ, this 
doctrine seeks to solve these two problems, and 
with what little success we have seen. 

Parallelism has tried to avoid these two problems; 
not only does it not solve them, but it arranges so 
as not to propound them. The expedient adopted 
consists in avoiding the meeting of the physical 
and the mental; instead of placing them end to 
end and welding one to the other, they are placed 
in parallel fashion side by side. To explain 
their correlation, which so many observations 
vaguely demonstrate, the following hypothesis 
is advanced. Physical and psychical life form 
two parallel currents, which never mingle their 
waters; to every state of definite consciousness 
there corresponds the counterpart of an equally 
definite state of the nerve centres; the fact of 
consciousness has its antecedents and its conse- 
quences in the consciousness; and the physical 
fact equally takes its place in a chain of physical 
facts. The two series are thus evolved, and 
correspond strictly to each other according to a 
necessary law ; so that the scholar who was per- 
fectly instructed, and to whom one of these states 
was presented, could describe its fellow. But never 
does any of the terms of one series influence the 
terms of the other. 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 217 

Observation and the testimony of the conscious- 
ness seem to attest this dual progress ; but they 
are, according to the parallelist hypothesis, illu- 
sions. When I move my arm by a voluntary 
act, it is not my will, qua act of consciousness, 
which determines the movement of the arm — 
for this is a material fact. The movement is 
produced by the coming into play of groups of 
muscles. Each muscle, composed of a semi-fluid 
substance, being excited, contracts in the direction 
of its greatest length. The excitant of the muscles 
is also a material fact, a material influx which 
starts from the motor cells of the encephalon, and 
of which we know the course down through the 
pyramidal fascium, the anterior roots of the spinal 
cord, and the nerves of the periphery to its ter- 
mination in the motor plates of the muscles. It is 
this excitement which is the physical, direct, and 
veritable cause of voluntary movements. And it 
is the same with all acts and signs, all expressions 
of our conscious states ; the trembling of fear, the 
redness of anger, the movements of walking, down 
to the words we utter— all these are physical effects 
produced by physical processes, which act physi- 
cally, and of which the mental counterpart has in 
itself no effective action. 

Let it be understood that I am here pointing 
out one of the forms, and that the most usual, of 
the parallelist theory. Each author varies it 



218 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



according to his fancy; some widen the corre- 
spondence between the physical and the moral, 
others prefer to narrow it. At one time a vague 
relation is supposed which is only true on a 
large scale, and is a union rather than an equi- 
valence. At another, it is an exact counterpart, a 
complete duplicate in which the smallest physical 
event corresponds to a mental one. 

In one of the forms of this theory that has been 
recently invented, parallelists have gone so far as 
to assert that there exists no real cohesion in the 
mental chain, and that no mental phenomenon 
can have the property of provoking another 
mental phenomenon by an act of true causality. 
It is within the nervous tissue, they say, that the 
nexus of psychic states should be enclosed. These 
should succeed in time without being directly 
connected with one another ; they should succeed 
because the physical basis of them is excited in 
succession. Some of them would be like an air on 
the piano : the notes follow each other and arrange 
themselves into melodies, not by any affinity proper 
to themselves, but because the keys of the in- 
strument are struck in the required order. 

I said a little while ago that parallelism was a 
perfected materialism. The reason of this will be 
understood. It is a doctrine which preserves the 
determinism of physical facts while avoiding the 
compromising of itself in the difficult explanation 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 219 

of the connection between the soul and the body. 
It remains scientific without raising a metaphysical 



Bain is one of those who have most clearly 
expressed, not only the advantages, but also the 
aspirations of this theory (Mind and Body, p. 
130):— 

" We have every reason for believing," he says, 
"that there is in company with all our mental 
processes, an unbroken material succession. From 
the ingress of a sensation, to the outgoing responses 
in action, the mental succession is not for an in- 
stant dissevered from a physical succession. A 
new prospect bursts upon the view; there is 
mental result of sensation, emotion, thought — 
terminating in outward displays of speech or 
gesture. Parallel to this mental series is the 
physical series of facts, the successive agitation 
of the physical organs, called the eye, the retina, 
the optic nerve, optic centres, cerebral hemi- 
spheres, outgoing nerves, muscles, &c. While we 
go the round of the mental circle of sensation, 
emotion, and thought, there is an unbroken 
physical circle of effects. It would be incom- 
patible with everything we know of the cerebral 
action, to suppose that the physical chain ends 
abruptly in a physical void, occupied by an im- 
material substance; which immaterial substance, 
after working alone, imparts its results to the 




220 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

other edge of the physical break, and determines 
the active response — two shores of the material 
with an intervening ocean of the immaterial 
There is, in fact, no rupture of nervous con- 
tinuity. The only tenable supposition is, that 
mental and physical proceed together, as un- 
divided twins." 

On reading this passage it is easy to see the 
idea which forms the basis of the doctrine. It is, 
as I have already said, the fetichism of mechanics : 
parallelism takes its inspiration from this quite as 
directly as does materialism, but with more skill, 
inasmuch as it avoids the most dangerous question, 
that of the interaction of physics and morals, and 
replaces it by an hypothesis much resembling 
Leibnitz^s hypothesis of the pre-established har- 
mony. On the other hand, a second merit of this 
prudent doctrine is the avoiding the question of 
genesis. It does not seek for the origin of thought, 
but places this last in a relation of parallelism with 
the manifestations of matter ; and in the same way 
that parallel lines prolonged ad infinitum never 
meet, so the partisans of this doctrine announce 
their resolution not to inquire how the actual 
state of things has been formed, nor how it will 
end if, for example, one of the terms should dis- 
appear by the death of the bodily organism. 

Notwithstanding so many precautions, criticisms 
have not been wanting ; only they would seem not 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 221 

to have touched the weak part of the doctrine and 
not to be decisive. We will only run through 
them briefly. 

It has been said: there is no logical necessity 
which forces us to refuse to the consciousness the 
privilege of acting in complete independence of the 
nervous mechanism. « 

It has also been said : it is by no means certain 
that any nervous mechanism can be invented 
which imitates and, if need were, could replace an 
intellectual act. For instance, what association 
of nerve cells, what molecular action, can imitate 
an act of comparison which enables us to see a 
resemblance between two objects ? Let it be sup- 
posed, for example, that the resemblance of two 
impressions come from a partial identity, and that 
the latter has for material support an identity in 
the seat or the form of the corresponding nervous 
influx. But what is identity? How can it be 
conceived without supposing resemblance, of which 
it is but a form ? How, then, can the one be ex- 
plained by the other ? Thus, for instance, at the 
bottom of all our intellectual acts, there is a 
certain degree of belief. Can any material com- 
bination be found which corresponds thereto ? 

There is one last objection, the most serious of all. 
Parallelism, by establishing a fixed and invariable 
relation between the physical and the moral, ends 
by denying the rdle of this last, since the physical 



222 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

mechanism is sufficient to draw to itself all the 
effects which general belief attributes to the 
moral. The parallelists on this point go very 
much further than the materialists ; the latter at 
least concede that the consciousness is of some 
use, since they compared it to a function or a 
secretion, and, after all, a secretion is a useful 
liquid. The parallelists are so strongly convinced 
that mechanism is alone efficacious that they 
come to deny any r61e to thought. The con- 
sciousness for them has no purpose : yet it keeps 
company with its object. The metaphors which 
serve to define it, part of which have been imagined 
by Huxley, are all of a passive nature. Such is 
the light, or the whistling noise which accom- 
panies the working of an engine, but does not act 
on its machinery. Or, the shadow which dogs 
the steps of the traveller. Or a phosphorescence 
lighting up the traces of the movements of the 
brain. 

It has also been said that the consciousness is 
a useless luxury. Some have even gone further, 
and the fine and significant name of epipheno- 
Tnenon, that has been given to thought, well 
translates that conception, according to which 
semi-realities may exist in nature. 

All these objections certainly carry great weight, 
but they are not capable of killing the doctrine 
— they only scotch it 



MATERIALISM AND PARALLELISM 223 

I think there is a radical vice in parallelism, 
which till now has not been sufficiently indicated, 
and I ask what can really remain of the whole 
edifice when this vice has been once exposed ? 

Parallelism implies a false idea, which we have 
already come across when discussing materialism. 
It is the idea that a phenomenon of consciousness 
constitutes one complete whole. 

The error proceeds from the use of concepts 
which cause the reality to be lost sight of. The 
reality shows that every phenomenon of con- 
sciousness consists in a mode of activity, an aggre- 
gate of faculties which require an object to fasten 
on to and so realise themselves, and that this object 
is furnished by matter. What we always note 
in intuition is the union, the incarnation of con- 
sciousness-matter. Our thoughts, our memories, 
our reasonings have as object sensations, images — 
that is to say, things which, strictly speaking, 
are as material as our own brains. It is there- 
fore rather ohildish to put all these workings of 
the spirit on another plane and in another world 
than the workings of the brain since they are 
in great part of the same nature as the last 
named and they contain so many material 
elements. Now if we re-establish facts as they 
are, if we admit a parallelism between physical 
phenomena, on the one hand, and phenomena at 
once physical and psychical, on the other, the 



224 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

parallelist hypothesis loses every sort of meaning. 
It ceases to present to us the image of two pheno- 
mena of an absolutely different order, which are 
found coupled together like the two faces of a 
unity, the front and back of a page, the right 
and wrong side of a stuff. If there is anything 
material in the psychical part, the opposition of 
nature no longer exists between the two terms; 
they become identical. 

Very often, certain parallelists, after thinking 
they have discovered the duality of nature, 
endeavour to bring it back to unity by sup- 
posing that the two faces of the reality are as 
two effects of one unique reality, inaccessible to 
our senses and underlying appearances. Why 
go so far afield to seek unity? It is trouble in 
vain: for it is to be found in the phenomenon 
itself. 



CHAPTER IV 



MODERN THEORIES 

It may be thought that the objection taken 
above to parallelism and materialism is personal 
to myself, because I have put it forward as the 
consequence of my analysis of the respective shares 
of thought and matter in every act of cognition. 
This is not so. I am here in harmony with other 
philosophers who arrived at the same conclusions 
long before me, and it may be useful to quote 
them. 

We will begin with the prince of idealists, 
Berkeley. "'Everything you know or conceive 
other than spirits/ says Philonous to Hylas, 'is 
but your ideas; so then when you say that all 
ideas are occasioned by impressions made in the 
brain, either you conceive this brain or you do 
not. If you conceive it, you are in that case talk- 
ing of ideas imprinted in an idea which is the 
cause of this very idea, which is absurd. If you 
do not conceive it, you are talking unintelligibly, 
you are not forming a reasonable hypothesis.' 
' How can it be reasonable/ he goes on to say, ' to 
think that the brain, which is a sensible thing, i.e. 

a»5 p 



226 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



which can be apprehended by the senses — an idea 
consequently which only exists in the mind — is 
the cause of our other ideas ? ' " 1 

Thus, in the reasoning of Berkeley, the function 
of the brain cannot explain the production of ideas, 
because the brain itself is an idea, and an idea 
cannot be the cause of all our other ideas. 

M. Bergson's argument is quite similar, although 
he takes a very different standpoint from that of 
idealism. He takes the word image in the vaguest 
conceivable sense. To explain the meaning of 
this word he simply says : " images which are per- 
ceived when I open my senses, and unperceived 
when I close them." He also remarks that the ex- 
ternal objects are images, and that the brain and 
its molecular disturbances are likewise images. 
And he adds, "For this image which I call 
cerebral disturbance to generate the external 
images, it would have to contain them in one way 
or another, and the representation of the whole 
material universe would have to be implicated 
in that of this molecular movement. Now, it is 
enough to enunciate such a proposition to reveal 
its absurdity." 2 

1 I borrow this quotation from Rrnouvieb, Le Pertonndlitmt, 
p. 263. 

8 McUiire et MSmoire, p. 3. The author has returned to this 
point more at length in a communication to the Congres de 
Philosophic de Geneve, in 1904. See Revue de Mitapkytique et 
de Morale, Nov. 1904, communication from H. Bebgson entitled 
"Le Paralogi8me psycho-physiologique." Here is a passage 



MODERN THEORIES 



227 



It will be seen that this reasoning is the same 
as Berkeley's, though the two authors are reason- 
ing on objects that are different; according to 
Berkeley, the brain and the states of conscience 
are psychical states; according to Bergson, the 
definition of the nature of these two objects desig- 
nated by the term image is more comprehensive, 
but the essential of his argument is independent 
of this definition It is enough that the two 
terms should be of similar nature for one to 
be unable to generate the other. 

My own argument in its turn comes rather 
near the preceding ones. For the idea of Berkeley, 
and the image of Bergson, I substitute the term 
matter. I say that the brain is matter, and that 
the perception of any object is perception of 
matter, and I think it is not easy to explain how 
from this brain can issue this perception, since 
that would be to admit that from one matter 
may come forth another matter. There is cer- 
tainly here a great difficulty. 

from this article which expresses the same idea: 41 To say that 
the image of the surrounding world issues from this image (from 
the cerebral movement), or that it expresses itself by this image, 
or that it arises as soon as this image is suggested, or that one 
gives it to one's self by giving one's self this image, would be to 
contradict one's self ; since these two images, the outer world 
and the intra-cerebral movement, have been supposed to be of 
the same nature, and the second image is, by the hypothesis, an 
infinitesimal part of the field of representation, while the first 
fills the whole of it." 



228 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



M. Bergson has thought to overcome it by 
attacking it in the following way. He has the 
very ingenious idea of changing the position of 
the representation in relation to the cerebral move- 
ment. The materialist places the representation 
after this movement and derives it from the move- 
ment ; the parallolist places it by the side of the 
movement and in equivalence to it. M. Bergson 
places it before the movement, and supposes it to 
play with regard to it the part of exciting cause, 
or simply that of initiator. This cerebral move- 
ment becomes an effect of the representation and 
a motor effect. Consequently the nervous system 
passes into the state of motor organ ; the sensory 
nerves are not, as supposed, true sensory nerves, 
but they are the commencements of motor nerves, 
the aim of which is to lead the motor excitements 
to the centres which play the part of commutators 
and direct the current, sometimes by one set of 
nerves, sometimes by others. The nervous system 
is like a tool held in the hand ; it is a vehicle for 
action, we are told, and not a substratum for cog- 
nition. I cannot here say with what ingenuity, 
with what powerful logic, and with what close 
continuity of ideas M. Bergson develops his 
system, nor with what address he braves its 
difficulties. 

His mind is remarkable alike for its power of 
systematisation and its suppleness of adaptation. 



MODERN THEORIES 



229 



Before commencing to criticise him, I am anxious 
to say how much I admire him, how much I agree 
with him throughout the critical part of his work, 
and how much I owe to the perusal of his book, 
Mati&re et M&mmre. Though I was led into meta- 
physics by private needs, though some of the ideas 
I have set forth above were conceptions of my 
own (for example, the criticism of the mechanical 
theory of matter, and the definition of sensation), 
before I had read M. Bergson's book, it cannot be 
denied that its perusal has so strongly modified 
my ideas that a great part of these are due 
to him without my feeling capable of exactly 
discerning which ; for ideas have a much more im- 
personal character than observations and experi- 
ments. It would therefore have been ungrateful 
to criticise him before having rendered him this 
tribute. 

There are, in M. Bergson's theory, a few asser- 
tions which surprise us a little, like everything 
which runs counter to old habits. It has always 
been supposed that our body is the receptacle of 
our psychological phenomena. We store our remi- 
niscences in our nerve centres ; we put the state 
of our emotions in the perturbations of certain 
apparatus; we find the physical basis of our 
efforts of will and of attention in the sensa- 
tions of muscular tension born in our limbs or 
trunk. Directly we believe that the nervous 



230 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

system is no longer the depository of these states, 
we must change their domicile; and where are 
they to be placed? Here the theory becomes 
obscure and vague, and custom renders it difficult 
to understand the situation of the mind outside 
the body. M. Bergson places memory in planes 
of consciousness far removed from action, and 
perception he places in the very object we 
perceive. 

If I look at my bookcase, my thought is in my 
books; if I look at the sky, my thought is in a 
star. 1 It is very difficult to criticise ideas such 
as these, because one is never certain that one 
understands them. I will therefore not linger 
over them, notwithstanding the mistrust which 
they inspire in me. 

But what seems to me to require proof is the 
function M. Bergson is led to attribute to the 
sensory nerves. To his mind, it is not exact to 
say that the excitement of a sensory nerve ex- 
cites sensation. This would be a wrong descrip- 
tion, for, according to him, every nerve, even a 
sensory one, serves as a motor ; it conducts the dis- 
turbance which, passing through the central com- 
mutator, flows finally into the muscles. But then, 
whence comes it that I think I feel a sensation when 
my sensory nerve is touched ? Whence comes it 
that a pressure on the epitrochlear nerve gives me 

1 MatUre et MSmoirt, p. 31 



MODERN THEORIES 



231 



a tingling in the hand ? Whence comes it that a 
blow on the eyeball gives me a fleeting impression 
of light? One must read the page where M. 
Bergson struggles against what seems to me the 
evidence of the facts. " If, for one reason or an- 
other," he says, " the excitement no longer passes, 
it would be strange if the corresponding perception 
took place, since this perception would then put 
our body in relation with points of space which 
would no longer invite it to make a choice. Divide 
the optic nerve of any animal; the disturbance 
starting from the luminous point is no longer 
transmitted to the brain, and thence to the motor 
nerves. The thread which connected the external 
object to the motor mechanism of the animal by 
enveloping the optic nerve, is severed ; the visual 
perception has therefore become powerless, and in 
this powerlessness consists unconsciousness." This 
argument is more clever than convincing. It 
is not convincing, because it consists in exagge- 
rating beyond all reason a very real fact, that of 
the relation which can be discovered between our 
sensations and our movements. We believe, with 
M. Bergson, that it is absolutely correct to see in 
action the end and the raison tfitre of our intel- 
ligence and our sensibility. But does it follow 
that every degree, every shade, every detail of 
sensation, even the most insignificant, has any 
importance for the action? The variations of 



232 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

sensibility are much more numerous than those of 
movements and of adaptation; very probably, as 
is seen in an attentive study of infancy, sensibility 
precedes the power of motion in its differentia- 
tions. A child shows an extraordinary acuteness 
of perception at an age when its hand is still very 
clumsy. The correlation, then, is not absolute. 
And then even if it were so, it would not follow 
that the suppression of any movement would pro- 
duce by rebound the suppression of the sensation 
to which this movement habitually corresponds. 
On this hypothesis, a sensation which loses its 
motor effect becomes useless. Be it so ; but this 
does not prove that the uselessness of a sen- 
sation is synonymous with insensibility. I can 
very well imagine the movement being suppressed 
and the useless sensation continuing to evoke 
images and to be perceived. Does not this 
occur daily? There are patients who, after an 
attack of paralysis remain paralysed in one 
limb, which loses the voluntary movement, but 
does not necessarily lose its sensibility. Many 
clear cases are observed in which this dissociation 
takes place. 

I therefore own that I cannot follow M. Bergson 
in his deduction. As a physiologist, I am obliged 
to believe firmly in the existence of the sensory 
nerves, and therefore I continue to suppose that 
our conscious sensations are consequent to the 



MODERN THEORIES 



233 



excitement of these nerves and subordinate to 
their integrity. Now, as therein lies, unless I 
mistake, the essential postulate, the heart of M. 
Bergson's theory, by not admitting it I must 
regretfully reject the whole. 



CHAPTER V 



CONCLUSION 

A few convinced materialists and parallelists, to 
whom I have read the above criticisms on their 
systems, have found no answer to them ; my criti- 
cisms have appeared to them just, but nevertheless 
they have continued to abide by their own systems, 
probably because they were bound to have one. 
We do not destroy an erroneous idea when we do 
not replace it by another. 

This has decided me to set forth some personal 
views which, provisionally, and for want of better, 
might be substituted for the old doctrines. Before 
doing this, I hasten to explain their character, and 
to state openly that they are only hypotheses. 

I know that metaphysicians rarely make avowals 
of this kind. They present their systems as a 
well-connected whole, and they set forth its 
different parts, even the boldest of them, in the 
same dogmatic tone, and without warning that we 
ought to attach very unequal degrees of con- 
fidence to these various parts. This is a deplorable 
method, and to it is perhaps due the kind of dis- 
dain that observers and experimentalists feel for 

•34 



CONCLUSION 



235 



metaphysics — a disdain often without justifica- 
tion, for all is not false, and everything is not 
hypothetical, in metaphysics. There are in it 
demonstrations, analyses, and criticisms, especially 
the last, which appear to me as exact and as cer- 
tain as an observation or experiment. The mistake 
lies in mixing up together in a statement, without 
distinction, the certain with the probable, and the 
probable with the possible. 

Metaphysicians are not wholly responsible for 
this fault of method; and I am much inclined to 
think that it is the natural consequence of the 
abuse of speculation. It is especially by the 
cultivation of the sciences of observation that we 
foster in ourselves the precious sense of proof, 
because we can check it any minute by experi- 
mental verification. When we are working at a 
distance from the facts, this sense of proof gets 
thinner, and there is lost that feeling of responsi- 
bility and fear of seeing one's assertions contra- 
dicted by a decisive countervailing observation, 
which is felt by every observer. One acquires the 
unbearable pride which I note in Kant, and one 
abandons one's self to the spirit of construction. 
I am speaking from personal experience. I have 
several times detected within me this bad spirit 
of construction. I have been seeking to group 
several facts of observation under the same idea, 
and then I have discovered that I was belittling 



236 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

and depreciating those facts which did not fit in 
with the idea. 

The hypothesis I now present on the relations of 
the mind and the brain has, for me, the advantage 
of bringing to light the precise conditions which a 
solution of this great problem must satisfy for this 
solution to be worthy of discussion. 

These conditions are very numerous. I shall 
not indicate them all successively; but here are 
two which are particularly important 

i. The manifestations of the consciousness are 
conditioned by the brain. Let us suspend, by any 
means, the activity of the encephalic mass, by 
arresting the circulation of the blood for example, 
and the psychic function is at once inhibited. 
Compress the carotid, and you obtain the clouding- 
over of the intellect. Or, instead of a total aboli- 
tion, you can have one in detail ; sever a sensory 
nerve with the bistoury, and all the sensations which 
that nerve transmits to the brain are suppressed. 
Consciousness appears only when the molecular 
disturbance reaches the nerve centres ; everything 
takes place in the same way as if this disturbance 
released the consciousness. Consciousness also 
accompanies or follows certain material states of 
the nerve centres, such as the waves which traverse 
the sensory nerves, which exercise reflex action in 
the cells, and which propagate themselves in the 
motor nerves. It is to the production, the dis- 



CONCLUSION 



237 



tribution, and the integrity of this nervous influx 
that the consciousness is closely linked. It there 
finds one of the conditions of its apparition. 

2. On the other hand, the consciousness re- 
mains in complete ignorance of these intra- 
cerebral phenomena. It does not perceive the 
nerve-wave which sets it in motion, it knows 
nothing of its peculiarities, of its trajectory, or the 
length of its course. In this sense it may be said 
that it is in no degree an anatomist; it has no 
idea of all the peculiarities of the nerve-wave 
which form part of its cerebral history from the 
moment when these peculiarities are out of re- 
lation with the properties of external objects. 

One sometimes wonders that our conscious- 
ness is not aware that the objects we perceive 
with our two eyes correspond to a double un- 
dulation, namely, that of the right and that of 
the left, and that the image is reversed on the 
retina, so that it is the rods of the right which are 
impressed by objects on our left, and the rods of 
the upper part by objects below our eyes. These 
are, it has been very justly said, factitious prob- 
lems, imaginary difficulties which do not exist. 
There is no need to explain, for instance, direct 
vision by a reversed image, because our conscious- 
ness is not aware that the image on the retina is 
reversed. In order to take account of this, we 
should require another eye to see this image. 



238 THE MIND AND THB BRAIN 

This answer appears particularly to the point. It 
will be found that it is absolutely correct if we 
reflect that this case of the unfelt inversion of the 
image on the retina is but one example of the 
anatomical ignorance of the consciousness. 

It might also be declared, in the same order of 
ideas, that our consciousness is ignorant, that ex- 
citements of the eye cross each other at the level 
of the chiasma, and pass through the internal 
capsule, and that the majority of the visual ex- 
citements of an eye are received by the opposite 
hemisphere. 

A rather confused notion of these facts has 
formed itself in the minds of several critics, and 
I can discern the proof of this in the language 
they use. It will be said, for example, that the 
idea exists in the consciousness or in the mind, 
and phrases like the following will be avoided: 
"I think with my brain" — the suggestion con- 
sists in introducing an idea in the brain — "The 
nerve cell perceives and reasons, &c." Ordi- 
narily these forms of speech are criticised because 
they appear to have the defect of establishing a 
confusion between two irreducible elements, the 
physical and the mental. I think the error of 
language proceeds from another cause, since I do 
not admit this distinction between the physical 
and the mental I think that the error consists 
in supposing vaguely that the consciousness com- 



CONCLUSION 



239 



prehends intra-cerebral phenomena, whereas it 
ignores them. 

Let me repeat that there is no such thing as 
intra-cerebral sensibility. The consciousness is 
absolutely insensitive with regard to the disposi- 
tions of the cerebral substance and its mode of 
work. It is not the nervous undulation which 
our consciousness perceives, but the exciting cause 
of this wave — that is, the external object. The 
consciousness does not feel that which is quite 
close to it, but is informed of that which passes 
much further off. Nothing that is produced 
inside the cranium interests it; it is solely oc- 
cupied with objects of which the situation is 
extra-cranial. It does not penetrate into the 
brain, we might say, but spreads itself like a 
sheet over the periphery of the body, and thence 
springs into the midst of the external objects. 

There is, therefore, I do not say a contradiction, 
but a very striking contrast between these two 
facts. The consciousness is conditioned, kept up, 
and nourished by the working of the cerebral 
substance, but knows nothing of what passes in 
the interior of that substance. This conscious- 
ness might itself be compared to a parasitical 
organism which plunges its tap roots into the 
nerve centres, and of which the organs of 
perception, borne on long stalks, emerge from 
the cranium and perceive everything outside 



240 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

that cranium. But this is, of course, only a 
rough image. 

Strictly, it is possible to explain this distribution 
of the conscience, singular as it is at first sight, 
by those reasons of practical utility which are so 
powerful in the history of evolution. 

A living being has to know the world external 
to himself in order to adapt and preadapt himself 
to it, for it is in this outer world that he finds 
food, shelter, beings of his own species, and the 
means of work, and it is on this world of objects 
that he acts in every possible way by the con- 
tractions of his muscles. But with regard to 
intraccphalic actions, they are outside the ordi- 
nary sphere of our actions. There is no daily 
need to know them, and we can understand that 
the consciousness has not found very pressing 
utilitarian motives for development in that direc- 
tion. One must be an histologist or a surgeon 
to find an appreciable interest in studying the 
structure of the nerve cell or the topography of 
the cerebral centres. 

We can therefore explain well enough, by the 
general laws of adaptation, the reason of the 
absence of what might be called " cerebral sensi- 
bility," but, here as elsewhere, the question of the 
" Why " is much easier to solve than that of the 
" How." 

The question of the "How" consists in ex- 



CONCLUSION 241 

plaining that the consciousness, directly aroused 
by a nerve-wave, does not perceive this undula- 
tion, but in its stead the external object. Let us 
first note that between the external object and 
the nervous influx there is the relation of cause 
to effect. It is only the effect which reaches us, 
our nerve cells, and our consciousness. What 
must be explained is how a cognition (if such 
a word may be employed here) of the effect 
can excite the consciousness of the cause. It is 
clear that the effect does not resemble the cause, 
as quality: the orange I am looking at has no 
resemblance with the brain wave which at this 
moment is traversing my optic nerve; but this 
effect contains everything which was in the cause, 
or, more exactly, all that part of the cause of which 
we have perception. Since it is only by the inter- 
mediary of our nervous system that we perceive 
the object, all the properties capable of being per- 
ceived are communicated to our nervous system 
and inscribed in the nerve wave. The effect pro- 
duced therefore is the measure of our perception 
of the cause. This is absolutely certain. All 
bodies possess an infinity of properties which 
escape our cognitions ; because, as excitants of our 
organism, these properties are wanting in the in- 
tensity or the quality necessary to make it vibrate; 
they have not been tuned in unison with our 
nervous chords. And, inversely, all we perceive 

Q 



242 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

of the mechanical, physical, and chemical pro- 
perties of a body is contained in the vibra- 
tion this body succeeds in propagating through 
our cerebral atmosphere. There is in this a 
phenomenon of transmission analogous to that 
which is produced when an air of music is sent 
along a wire ; the whole concert heard at the other 
extremity of the wire has travelled in the form of 
delicate vibrations. 

There must therefore exist, though unperceived 
by our senses, a sort of kinship between the 
qualities of the external objects and the vibrations 
of our nerves. This is sometimes forgotten. The 
theory of the specific energy of the nerves causes 
it to be overlooked. As we see that the quality of 
the sensation depends on the nerve that is excited, 
one is inclined to minimise the importance of the 
excitant. It is relegated to the position of a 
proximate cause with regard to the vibration of 
the nerve, as the striking of a key on the piano 
is the proximate cause of the vibration of a string, 
which always gives the same degree of sound 
whether struck by the forefinger or third finger, 
or by a pencil or any other body. It will be seen 
at once that this comparison is inexact. The 
specific property of our nerves does not prevent 
our knowing the form of the excitant, and our 
nerves are only comparable to piano strings if 
we grant to these the property of vibrating dif- 



CONCLUSION 243 

ferently according to the nature of the bodies 
which strike them. 

How is it that the nerve wave, if it be the 
depository of the whole of the physical properties 
perceived in the object, resembles it so little ? It 
is because — this is my hypothesis — these pro- 
perties, if they are in the undulation, are not 
there alone. The undulation is the work of two 
collaborators : it expresses both the nature of the 
object which provokes it and that of the nervous 
apparatus which is its vehicle. It is like the 
farrow traced in the wax of the phonograph which 
expresses the collaboration of an aerial vibration 
with a stylus, a cylinder, and a clock-work move- 
ment. This engraved line resembles, in short, 
neither the phonographic apparatus nor the aerial 
vibration, although it results from the combination 
of the two. 

Similarly, I suppose that if the nervous vibration 
resembles so little the excitant which gives it birth, 
it is because the factor nervous system adds its 
effect to the factor external object. Each of these 
factors represents a different property : the exter- 
nal object represents a cognition and the nervous 
system an excitement. 

Let us imagine that we succeed in separating 
these two effects It will be conceived, theoretically, 
that a separation of this kind- will lay bare the 
hidden resemblances, giving to each collaborator 



244 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

the part which belongs to it. The excitement, 
for instance, will be suppressed, and the cognition 
will be retained. Is it possible to make, or at least 
to imagine, such an analysis? Perhaps: for, of 
these two competing activities, one is variable, 
since it depends on the constantly changing 
nature of the objects which come into relation 
with us; the other, on the contrary, is a con- 
stant, since it expresses the contribution of our 
nerve substance, and, though this last is of very 
unstable composition, it necessarily varies much 
less than the series of excitants. We consequently 
see faintly that these two elements differ suf- 
ficiently in character for us to be able to suppose 
that they are separable by analysis. 

But how could this analysis be made ? Evidently 
not by chemical or physical means: we have no 
need here of reagents, prisms, centrifugal appa- 
ratus, permeable membranes, or anything of 
that kind. It will suffice to suppose that it is 
the consciousness itself that is the dialyser. It 
acts by virtue of its own laws — that is to say, by 
changes in intensity. Supposing that sensibility 
increases for the variable elements of the undu- 
lation, and becomes insensible for the constant 
elements. The effect will be the same as a 
material dissociation by chemical analysis : there 
will be an elimination of certain elements and 
the retention of others. 



CONCLUSION 245 

Now, all we know of the consciousness autho- 
rises us to entrust this role to it, for it is within 
the range of its habits. We know that change 
is the law of consciousness, that it is effaced when 
the excitements are uniform, and is renewed by 
their differences or their novelty. A oontinued 
or too often repeated excitement ceases in time 
to be perceived. It is to condense these facts 
into a formula that Bain speaks of the law 'of 
relativity of cognition, and, in spite of a few am- 
biguities on the part of Spencer and of Bain him- 
self in the definition of this law, 1 the formula 
with the sense I have just indicated is worth 
preserving. 

Let us see what becomes of it, when my hypo- 
thesis is adopted. It explains how certain excite- 
ments proceeding from the objects — that is to say, 
forming part of the variable element — cease to 
be perceived when they are repeated and tend 
to become constant. A fortiori, it seems to me, 
should the same law explain how the constant 
element par excellence, the one which never varies 
from the first hour, is never perceived. There is, 
in the concert of the sounds of nature, an accom- 
paniment so monotonous that it is no longer per- 

1 The iquivoque perpetrated by Bain and Spenceb consists 
in supposing that the consciousness bears solely on differences. 
This is going too far. I confine myself to admitting that, if 
sensation is not changed from time to time, the consciousness 
becomes weaker and disappears. 



246 THE BOND AND THE BRAIN 

ceived, and the melody alone continues to be 
heard. 

It is in this precisely that my hypothesis con- 
sists. We will suppose a nerve current starting 
from one of the organs of the senses, when it is 
excited by some object or other, and arriving at 
the centre of the brain. This current contains 
all the properties of the object, its colour, its form, 
its size, its thousand details of structure, its 
weight, its sonorous qualities, &c, &c, properties 
combined with and connected by the properties 
of the nerve-organ in which the current is propa- 
gated. The consciousness remains insensible to 
those nervous properties of the current which are 
so often repeated that they are annulled; it per- 
ceives, on the contrary, its variable and accidental 
properties which express the nature of the ex- 
citant. By this partial sensibility, the conscious- 
ness lays bare that which, in the nerve current, 
represents the object — that is to say, a cognition ; 
and this operation is equivalent to a transforma- 
tion of the current into a perception, image, or 
idea. There is not, strictly speaking, a transforma- 
tion, but an analysis ; only, the practical result is 
the same as that of a transformation, and is ob- 
tained without its being necessary to suppose 
the transmutation of a physical into a mental 
phenomenon. 

Let us place ourselves now at the moment when 



CONCLUSION 247 

the analysis I am supposing to be possible has just 
been effected. Our consciousness then assists at 
the unrolling of representations which correspond 
to the outer world. These representations are 
not, or do not appear to be, lodged in the brain ; 
and it is not necessary to suppose a special opera- 
tion which, taking them in the brain, should pro- 
ject them to the periphery of our nerves. This 
transport would be useless, since for the conscious- 
ness the brain does not exist : the brain, with its 
fibres and cells, is not felt ; it therefore supplies no 
datum to enable us to judge whether the repre- 
sentation is external or internal with regard to it. 
In other words, the representation is only localised 
in relation to itself; there is no determinate 
position other than that of one representation in 
relation to another. We may therefore reject as 
inexact the pretended law of eccentricity of the 
physiologists, who suppose that sensation is first 
perceived as it were centrally, and then, by an 
added act, is localised at the peripheric extremity 
of the nerve. This argument would only be 
correct if we admitted that the brain is per- 
ceived by the consciousness of the brain. I have 
already said that the consciousness is not an 
anatomist, and that therefore this problem does 
not present itself. 

Such as it is, this hypothesis appears to me to 
present the advantage of explaining the reason 



248 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

why our consciousness coincides, in certain cir- 
cumstances, with the actions of the brain, and, 
in others, does not come near them. In other 
words, it contains an explanation of the un- 
conscious. I can show this by quoting certain 
exact facts, of which the explanation has been 
hitherto thought to present difficulties, but which 
become very easy to understand on the present 
hypothesis. The first of these facts relates to the 
psychology of the motor current. This current 
has been a great feature in the studies which 
have been made on the feeling of effort and 
on the physical basis of the will. The motor 
current is that which, starting from the cere- 
bral cells of the motor region, travels by way of 
the fibres of the pyramidal tract into the muscles 
of the body; and it is centrifugal in direction. 
Researches have been made as to whether we are 
or may be conscious of this current; or rather, 
the question has been put in somewhat different 
terms. It has been asked whether a psychological 
state can be the counterpart of this motor current, 
— if, for example, the feeling of mental effort pro- 
duced in us at the moment of executing a difficult 
act or of taking a grave resolution, might not have 
this motor current for a basis. 

The opinion which has prevailed is in the nega- 
tive. We have recognised — a good deal on the 
faith of experiment, and a little also for theoretical 



CONCLUSION 



249 



reasons — that no sensation is awakened by the 
centrifugal current. As to the sensation of effort, 
it has been agreed to place it elsewhere. We 
put it among the centripetal sensations which 
are produced as the movement outlines itself, 
and which proceed from the contracted muscles, 
the stretched ligaments, and the frictional 
movements of the articulations. Effort would 
therefore form part of all the psychical phe- 
nomenology, which is the duplicate of those 
sensory currents which are centripetal in 
direction. 

In the long run, I can see no sort of theoretical 
reason for subordinating the consciousness to the 
direction of the nerve current, and for supposing 
that the consciousness is aroused when this 
current is centripetal, and that it cannot follow 
the centrifugal current. But this point matters 
little. My hypothesis would fairly well explain 
why the motor current remains unconscious; it 
explains the affair by taking into consideration 
the nature of this current and not its direction. 
This current is a motor one because it is born in 
the central cells, because it is a discharge from 
these cells, and is of entirely nervous origin. Since 
it does not correspond with the perception of an 
object — the ever varying object — it is always the 
same by nature. It does not carry with it in its 
monotonous course the cUbris of an object, as does 



250 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

the sensory current. Thus it can flow without 
consciousness. 

This same kind of hypothesis supplies us with 
the reasons why a given sensory current may be, 
according to circumstances, either conscious or 
unconscious. The consciousness resulting from 
the analysis of the molecular wave is, as it were, 
a supplementary work which may be subsequently 
added to the realised wave. The propagation of 
the wave is the essential fact — there is always 
time to become conscious of it afterwards. It is 
thus that we happen, in moments of abstraction, 
to remain insensible to certain even very powerful 
excitements. Our nervous system registers them, 
nevertheless, and we can find them again, later 
on, within the memory. This is the effect of a 
belated analysis. 

The converse phenomenon occurs much more 
frequently. We remark many actions and percep- 
tions which occur the first time with conscious- 
ness, emotion, and effort. Then, when they are 
repeated, as coordination becomes stronger and 
easier, the reflex consciousness of the operation 
becomes feebler. This is the law of habit, which 
slowly carries us towards automatism. These 
observations have even been extended, and the 
endeavour made to apply them to the explana- 
tion of the origin of reflex actions and of instincts 
which have all started with consciousness. This 



CONCLUSION 251 

is a rather bold attempt, for it meets with many 
serious difficulties in execution; but the idea 
seems fairly correct, and is acceptable if we may 
limit it. It is certain that the consciousness ac- 
companies the effort towards the untried, and 
perishes as soon as it is realised. Whence comes 
this singular dilemma propounded to it by 
nature: to create something new or perish? It 
really seems that my hypothesis explains this. 
Every new act is produced by nerve currents, 
which contain many of those variable elements 
which the consciousness perceives; but, in pro- 
portion as the action of the brain repeats itself 
and becomes more precise and more exact, this 
variable element becomes attenuated, falls to its 
lowest pitch, and may even disappear in the fixa- 
tion of habit and instinct. 

My hypothesis much resembles the system of 
parallelism. It perfects it, as it seems to me, as 
much as the latter has perfected materialism. 
We indeed admit a kind of parallelism between 
the consciousness and the object of cognition ; but 
these two series are not independent, not simply 
placed in juxtaposition as is possible in ordinary 
parallelism; they are united and fused together 
so as to complete each other. This new theory 
appears to me to represent a better form of the 
series of attempts which have been inspired by the 
common necessity of making the phenomena of 



252 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

consciousness accord with the determinism of 
physical facts. 

I hold fast to this physical determinism, and 
accept a strictly mechanical conception of the 
functions of the nervous system. In my idea> 
the currents which pass through the cerebral mass 
follow each other without interruption, from the 
sensorial periphery to the motor periphery ; it is 
they, and they alone, which excite the movements 
of the body by acting on the muscles. Parallelism 
recognises all these things, and I do likewise. 

Let us now see the advantages of this new 
system. First, it contains no paralogism, no logical 
or psychological error, since it does not advance 
the supposition that the mental differs by its 
nature from the physical phenomenon. We have 
discussed above the consequences of this error. 
They are here avoided. In the second place, it 
is explanatory, at least in a certain measure, 
since the formula we employ allows us to under- 
stand, better than by the principle of a simple 
juxtaposition, why certain nerve currents flow 
in the light of consciousness, while others are 
plunged into the darkness of unconsciousness. 
This law of consciousness, which Bain called 
the law of relativity, becomes, when embodied 
with my theory of the relations of the physical to 
the moral, an explanation of the distribution of 
consciousness through the actions of the brain. 



CONCLUSION 



253 



I ask myself whether the explanation I have 
devised ought to be literally preserved. Perhaps 
not. I have endeavoured less to present a ready- 
made solution than to indicate the direction in 
which we ought to look for one. The law of con- 
sciousness which I have used to explain the 
transformation of a nerve current into perception 
and images is only an empirical law produced 
by the generalisation of particular observations. 
Until now there has been, so far as I know, no 
attempt to ascertain whether this law of con- 
sciousness, notwithstanding the general nature 
which some authors incline to ascribe to it, might 
not explain itself by some more general facts, 
and might not fit, as a particular case, into a more 
comprehensive frame. To be brief, this is very 
possible. I have not troubled myself about it, 
and I have made a transcendental use of this 
empirical law; for I have impliedly supposed it 
to be a first principle, capable of accounting for 
the development of the consciousness, but itself 
incapable of explanation. 

If other observers discover that that which to 
me has appeared inexplicable, may be explained 
by quite peculiar causes, it is clear that my theory 
must be abandoned or modified. New theories must 
then be sought for, which will probably consist in 
recognising different properties in the conscious- 
ness. A little thought will discover several, I have 



254 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

no doubt. By way of suggestion, I will indicate 
one of these hypothetical possibilities : " The con- 
sciousness has the faculty of reading in the effect 
that which existed in the cause/ 1 It is not rash 
to believe that by working out this idea, a certain 
solution would be discovered. Moreover, the 
essential is, I repeat, less to find a solution than 
to take account of the point which requires one ; 
and metaphysics seem to me especially useful 
when it shows us where the gap in our know- 
ledge exists and what are the conditions required 
to fill this gap. 

Above all, I adhere to this idea, which has been 
one of the guiding forces of this book: there 
exists at the bottom of all the phenomena of the 
intelligence! a duality. To form a true pheno- 
menon, there must be at once a consciousness and 
an object. According to passing tendencies, either 
of temperament or of fashion, preponderance has 
been given sometimes to one of the terms of this 
couple, sometimes to the other. The idealist 
declares: "Thought creates the world." The 
materialist answers: "The matter of the brain 
creates thought." Between these two extreme 
opinions, the one as unjustifiable as the other 
in the excesses they commit, we take up an 
intermediate position. Looking at the balance, 
we see no argument capable of being placed in 
the scale of the consciousness which may not be 



CONCLUSION 



255 



neutralised by an argument placed in the scale 
of the object; and if we had to give our final 
verdict we should say: "The consciousness and 
matter have equal rights," thus leaving to every 
one the power to place, in this conception of an 
equality of rights, the hopes of survival of which 
his heart has need. 



CHAPTER VI 



RECAPITULATION 

I ask permission to reproduce here a communica- 
tion made by me in December 1904 to the Soci£t6 
Fran9aise de Philosophic. I there set forth 
briefly the ideas which I have just developed in 
this book. This succinct exposi may be useful as 
a recapitulation of the argument. 

Description of Matter. — The physicists who are 
seeking for a conception of the inmost structure of 
matter in order to explain the very numerous 
phenomena they perceive, fancy they can connect 
them with other phenomena, less numerous, but of 
the same order. They thus consider matter in 
itself. 

We psychologists add to matter something 
more, viz. the observer. We consider matter and 
define it by its relations to our modes of know- 
ledge — that is to say, by bearing in mind that it 
is conditioned by our external perception. These 
are two different points of view. 

In developing our own standpoint, we note that 

of the outer world we are acquainted with nothing 

356 



RECAPITULATION 257 

but our sensations : if we propound this limit, it is 
because many observations and experiments show 
that, between the external object and ourselves, 
there is but one intermediary, the nervous system, 
and that we only perceive the modifications which 
the external object, acting as an excitant, provokes 
in this system. 

Let us provisionally apply to these modifica- 
tions the term sensations, without settling the 
question of their physical or mental nature. 

Other experiments, again, prove "to us that our 
sensations are not necessarily similar to the objects 
which excite them ; for the quality of each sensa- 
tion depends on what is called the specific energy 
of the nerve excited. Thus, whether the optic 
nerve be appealed to by a ray of light, an electric 
current, or a mechanical shock, it always gives the 
same answer, and this answer is the sensation of 
light. 

It follows that our nervous system itself is 
only known to us as regards its structure by the 
intermediary of sensations, and we are not other- 
wise more informed upon its nature than upon 
that of any other object whatever. 

In the second place, a much more serious con- 
sequence is that all our sensations being equally 
false, so far as they are copies of the excitants 
which provoke them, one has no right to use 
any of these sensations to represent to ourselves 



258 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

the inmost structure of matter. The theories to 
which many physicists still cling, which consist 
in explaining all the modalities of matter by dif- 
ferent combinations of movement, start from false 
premises. Their error consists in explaining the 
whole body of our sensations by certain parti- 
cular sensations of the eye, of the touch, and of 
the muscular sense, in which analysis discovers 
the elements and the source of the representation 
of motion. Now these particular sensations have 
no more objective value than those of the tongue, 
of the nose, and of the ear ; in so far as they are 
related to the external excitant of which it is 
sought to penetrate the inmost nature, one of them 
is as radically false as the other. 

It is true that a certain number of persons will 
think to escape from our conclusion, because they 
do not accept our starting point. There exist, in 
fact, several systems which propound that the 
outer world is known to us directly without the 
intermediary of a tertivm quid, that is, of sensation. 
In the first place, the spiritists are convinced that 
disembodied souls can remain spectators of terres- 
trial life, and, consequently, can perceive it without 
the interposition of organs. On the other hand, 
some German authors have recently maintained, 
by rather curious reasoning, that the specific 
energy of our nervous system does not transform 
the excitants, and that our sensations are the 



RECAPITULATION 



259 



faithful copies of that which causes them. Finally, 
various philosophers, Reid, Hamilton, and, in our 
own days, the deep and subtle mind of M. Bergson, 
have proposed to admit that by direct compre- 
hension we have cognisance of the objects without 
mystery and as they are. Let this be admitted. 
It will change nothing in our conclusions, and for 
the following reasons. 

We have said that no kind of our sensations — 
neither the visual, the tactile, nor the muscular — 
permits us to represent to ourselves the inmost 
structure of matter, because all sensations, without 
exception, are false, as copies of material objects. 
We are now assured that we are mistaken, and 
that our sensations are all true — that is to say, are 
faithful copies of the objects. If all are true, it 
comes to the same thing as if all are false. If all 
are true, it is impossible to make any choice 
among them, to retain only the sensations of sight 
and touch, and to use them in the construction of a 
mechanical theory, to the exclusion of tlie others. 
For it is impossible for us to explain some by the 
others. If all are equally true, they all have the 
same right to represent the structure of matter, 
and, as they are irreconcilable, no theory can be 
formed from their synthesis. 

Let us, consequently, conclude this: whatever 
hypothesis may be built up on the relations 
possibly existing between matter and our sensa- 



26o THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



tions, we are forbidden to make a theory of matter 
in the terms of our sensations. 

That is what I think of matter, understood as 
the inmost structure of bodies — of unknowable 
and metaphysical matter. I shall not speak of 
it again; and henceforth when I use the word 
matter, it will be in quite a different acceptation 
— it will be empirical and physical matter, such 
as it appears to us in our sensations. It must 
therefore be understood that from this moment 
we change our ground. We leave the world of 
nowmena and enter that of phenomena. 

Definition of Mind. — Generally, to define the 
mind, we oppose the concept of mind to the con- 
cept of matter, with the result that we get extremely 
vague images in our thoughts. It is preferable to 
replace the concepts by facts, and to proceed to 
an inventory of all mental phenomena. 

Now, in the coarse of this inventory, we per- 
ceive that we have continually to do with two 
orders of elements, which are united in reality, 
but which our thought may consider as isolated. 
One of these elements is represented by those 
states which we designate by the name of sensa- 
tions, images, emotions, &c. ; the other element is 
the consciousness of these sensations, the cogni- 
tion of these images, the fact of experiencing these 
emotions. It is, in other words, a special activity 



RECAPITULATION 



of which these states are the object and, as it 
were, the point of application — an activity which 
consists in perceiving, judging, comparing, under- 
standing, and willing. To make our inventory 
orderly, let us deal with these two elements 
separately and begin with the first 

We will first examine sensation : let us put aside 
that which is the fact of feeling, and retain that 
which is felt. Thus defined and slightly con- 
densed, what is sensation? Until now we have 
employed the word in the very vague sense of a 
tertium quid interposed between the object and 
ourselves. Now we have to be more precise, and 
to inquire whether sensation is a physical or a 
mental thing. I need not tell you that on this 
point every possible opinion has been held. My 
own opinion is that sensation should be considered 
as a physical phenomenon ; sensation, be it under- 
stood, in the sense of impression felt, and not in 
that of capacity to feeL 

Here are the arguments I invoke for the support 
of my thesis : in the first place, popular opinion, 
which identifies matter with what we see, and with 
what we touch — that is to say, with sensation. 
This popular opinion represents a primitive atti- 
tude, a family possession which we have the right 
to retain, so long as it is not proved to us to be 
false: next, this remark, that by its mode of 
apparition at once unexpected, the revealer of 



262 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



new cognitions, and independent of our will, as 
well as by its content, sensation sums up for us 
all we understand by matter, physical state, outer 
world. Colour, form, extent, position in space, are 
known to us as sensations only. Sensation is not 
a means of knowing these properties of matter, it 
is these properties themselves. 

What objections can be raised against my con- 
clusion? One has evidently the right to apply 
the term psychological to the whole sensation, 
taken en bloc, and comprising in itself both im- 
pression and consciousness. The result of this 
terminology will be that, as we know nothing 
except sensations, the physical will remain un- 
knowable, and the distinction between the physical 
and the mental will vanish. But it will eventually 
be re-established under other names by utilising 
the distinction I have made between objects of cog- 
nition and acts of cognition ; — a distinction which 
is not verbal, and results from observation. 

What is not permissible is to declare that sensa- 
tion is a psychological phenomenon, and to oppose 
this phenomenon to physical reality, as if this 
latter could be known to us by any other method 
than sensation. 

If the opinion I uphold be accepted, if we agree 
to see in sensation, understood in a certain way, a 
physical state, it will be easy to extend this inter- 
pretation to a whole series of different phenomena. 



RECAPITULATION 



263 



To the images, first, which proceed from sensations, 
since they are recurring sensations ; to the emo- 
tions also, which, according to recent theories, 
result from the perception of the movements which 
are produced in the heart, the vessels, and the 
muscles ; and finally, to effort, whether of will or 
of attention, which is constituted by the muscular 
sensations perceived, and consequently also results 
from corporeal states. The consequences must be 
clearly remarked. To admit that sensation is a 
physical state, is to admit, by that very fact, 
that the image, idea, emotion, and effort — all 
those manifestations generally ascribed to the 
mind alone — are also physical states. 

What, then, is the mind? And what share 
remains to it in all these phenomena, from 
which it seems we are endeavouring to oust it? 
The mind is in that special activity which is 
engaged in sensation, image, idea, emotion, and 
effort. For a sensation to be produced, there 
must be, as I said a little time ago, two 
elements: the something felt — a tree, a house, 
an animal, a titillation, an odour, — and also 
the fact of feeling this something, the con- 
sciousness of it, the judgment passed on it, the 
reasoning applied to it — in other terms, the 
categories which comprehend it. From this 
point of view, the dualism contained in sen- 
sation is clearly expressed. Sensation as a thing 



264 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

felt, that is, the physical part, or matter; sen- 
sation as the fact of feeling or of judging, that 
is, the mind. 

Mark the language I use. We say that matter 
is the something felt ; but we do not say for the 
sake of symmetry, that the mind is the something 
which feels. I have used a more cautious, and, I 
think, a more just formula, which places the mind 
in the fact of feeling. Let me repeat again, at 
the risk of appearing too subtle : the mind is the 
act of consciousness; it is not a subject which 
has consciousness. For a subject, let it be noted, 
a subject which feels, is an object of cognition — 
it forms part of the other group of elements, the 
group of sensations. In practice we represent by 
mind a fragment of our own biography, and by 
dint of pains we attribute to this fragment the 
faculty of having a consciousness; we make it 
the subject of the relation subject-object. But 
this fragment, being constituted of memories and 
sensations, does not exactly represent the mind, 
and does not correspond to our definition; it 
would rather represent the mind sensationalised 
or materialised. 

From this follows the curious consequence that 
the mind is endowed with an incomplete exist- 
ence ; it is like form, which can only be realised 
by its application to matter of some kind. One 
may fancy a sensation continuing to exist, to live 



RECAPITULATION 265 

and to provoke movements, even after ceasing to 
be perceived. Those who are not uncompromising 
idealists readily admit this independence of the 
objects with regard to our consciousness, but the 
converse is not true. It is impossible to under- 
stand a consciousness existing without an object, 
a perception without a sensation to be perceived, 
an attention without a point of application, an 
empty wish which should have nothing to wish 
for ; in a word, a spiritual activity acting without 
matter on which to act, or more briefly still — 
mind without matter. Mind and matter are 
correlative terms; and, on this point, I firmly 
believe that Aristotle was much closer to the 
truth than many modern thinkers. 

I have convinced myself that the definition 
of mind at which we have just arrived is, in 
its exactness and soberness, the only one which 
permits psychology to be distinguished from the 
sciences nearest to it. Tou know that it has 
been discovered in our days that there exists 
a great difficulty in effecting this delimitation. 
The definitions of psychology hitherto proposed 
nearly all have the defect of not agreeing with 
the one thing defined. Time fails us to 
review them all, but I shall point out one at 
least, because our discussion on this particular 
formula will serve as a preparation for taking 
in hand the last question that remains to 



266 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 



be examined — the relation of the mind to the 
body. 

According to the definition I am aiming at, 
psychology would be the science of internal facts, 
while the other sciences deal with the external. 
Psychology, it has also been said, has as its in- 
strument introspection, while the natural sciences 
work with the eye, the touch, the ear — that is to 
say, with the senses of extrospection. 

To this distinction, I reply that in all sciences 
there exist but two things: sensations and the 
consciousness which accompanies them. A sensa- 
tion may belong to the inner or the outer world 
through accidental reasons, without any change 
in its nature; the sensation of the outer world 
is the social sensation which we share with our 
fellows. If the excitant which provokes it is in- 
cluded in our nervous system, it is the sensation 
which becomes individual, hidden to all except 
ourselves, and constituting a microcosm by the 
side of a macrocosm. What importance can this 
have, since all the difference depends on the 
position occupied by the excitant ? 

But we are persistently told: there are in 
reality two ways of arriving at the cognition of 
objects — from within and from without. These 
two ways are as opposite as the right and wrong 
side of a stuff. It is in this sense that psycho- 
logy is the science of the within and looks at 



RECAPITULATION 



267 



the wrong side, while the natural sciences reckon, 
weigh, and measure the right side. And this is 
so true, they add, that the same phenomenon 
absolutely appears under two forms radically 
different from each other according as they are 
looked at from one or the other of the two points 
of view. Every one of our thoughts, they point 
out to us, is in correlation with a particular state 
of our cerebral matter; our thought is the sub- 
jective and mental face, the corresponding cerebral 
process is the objective and material face. 

Though this dualism is frequently presented as 
an observed truth, I think it is possible to show 
its error. Take an example : I look at the plain 
before me, and see a flock of sheep pass through it. 
At the same time an observer, armed with a micro- 
scope cb la Jules Verne, looks into my brain and 
observes there a certain molecular dance which 
accompanies my visual perception. Thus, on the 
one hand, is my representation; on the other, a 
dynamic state of the nerve cells. This is what con- 
stitutes the right and the wrong sides of the stuff. 
We are told, "See how little resemblance there 
is in this ; a representation is a psychical, and a 
movement of molecules a material, thing." 

But I, on the contrary, think there is a great 
resemblance. When I see the flock passing, I 
have a visual perception. The observer who, by 
the hypothesis, is at that moment looking into 



268 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

my brain, also experiences a visual perception. 
Granted, they are not the same perception. 
How could they be the same ? I am looking at 
the sheep, he is looking at the interior of my 
brain ; it is not astonishing that, looking at objects 
so different, we should receive images also very 
different. But, notwithstanding their difference 
of object — that is, of content — there are here two 
visual perceptions composed in the same way : and 
I do not see by what right it can be said that one 
represents a material, the other a physical, phe- 
nomenon. In reality, each of these perceptions 
has a two-fold and psycho-physical value — physical 
in regard to the object to which it applies, and 
psychical inasmuch as it is an act of perception, 
that is to say, of consciousness. For one is just as 
much psychical as the other, and as much material, 
for a flock of sheep is as material a thing as is my 
brain. If we keep this conclusion in our minds, 
when we come to make a critical examination of 
certain philosophical systems, we shall easily see 
the mistake they make. 

Spiritualism 1 rests on the conception that the 
mind can subsist and work in total independence 
of any tie to matter. It is true that, in details, 
spiritualists make some modification in this abso- 
lute principle in order to explain the perceptions of 
the senses and the execution of the orders of the 

1 See note on p. 191. 



RECAPITULATION 



269 



will; but the duality, the independence, and the 
autonomy of the soul and the body remain, in any 
case, the peculiar dogma of the system. This 
dogma appears to me utterly false; the mind 
cannot exist without matter to which it is 
applied; and to the principle of heterogeneity, 
so often invoked to forbid all commerce between 
the two substances, I reply by appealing to in- 
tuition, which shows us the consciousness and 
its different forms, comparison, judgment, and 
reasoning, so closely connected with sensation 
that they cannot be imagined as existing with 
an isolated life. 

Materialism, we know, argues quite differently ; 
it imagines that a particular state of the nerve 
centres has the virtue of generating a psychi- 
cal phenomenon, which represents, according to 
various metaphors, property, function, effect, and 
even secretion. Critics have often asked how, 
with matter in motion, a phenomenon of thought 
could be explained or fabricated. It is very 
probable that those who admit this material 
genesis of thought, represent it to themselves 
under the form of something subtle, like an elec- 
tric spark, a puff of wind, a will-of-the-wisp, or an 
alcoholic flame. Materialists are not alone respon- 
sible for these inadequate metaphors, which pro- 
ceed from a metaphysics constructed of concepts. 
Let us recollect exactly what a psychical phe- 



270 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

noinenon is. Let us banish the will-o'-the-wisps, 
replace them by a precise instance, and return to 
the visual perception we took as an example a 
little while back : without intending a pun, " reve- 
nons k nos moutons." These sheep which I see 
in the plain are as material, as real, as the cere- 
bral movement which accompanies my perception. 
How, then, is it possible that this cerebral move- 
ment, a primary material fact, should engender 
this secondary material fact, this collection of 
complicated beings which form a flock? 

Before going any further, let us invite another 
philosophical system to take a place within the 
circle of our discussion ; for the same answer will 
suffice for it as well as for the preceding one, and it 
will be as well to deal with both at once. This new 
system, parallelism, in great favour at the present 
day, appears to me to be a materialism perfected 
especially in the direction of caution. To escape 
the mystery of the genesis of the mind from 
matter, this new system places them parallel to 
each other and side by side, we might almost say 
experimentally, so much do parallelists try to avoid 
talking metaphysics. But their position is unten- 
able, and they likewise are the victims of the 
mirage of concepts ; for they consider the mental 
as capable of being parallel to the physical without 
mingling with it, and of subsisting by itself and 
with a life of its own. Such a hypothesis is only 



RECAPITULATION 



271 



possible by reason of the insufficient definition 
given to the mind. If it be recognised that the 
mind has an incomplete existence and is only 
realised by its incarnation in matter, the figure 
which is the basis of parallelism becomes indefen- 
sible. There is no longer on the one hand the 
physical, and on the other the mental, but on 
one side the physical and the mental combined, 
and on the other the same combination; which 
amounts to saying that the two faces to a 
reality, which it was thought had been made out 
to be so distinct, are identical. There are not 
two faces, but one face ; and the monism, which 
certain metaphysicians struggle to arrive at by 
a mysterious reconciliation of the phenomenal 
duality within the unity of the noumenon, need 
not be sought so far afield, since we already 
discover it in the phenomenon itself. 

The criticisms I have just pointed out to you, 
only too briefly, are to be found in several philo- 
sophers, confusedly in Berkeley, and with more pre- 
cision in M. Bergson's book on Matihre et Mtmoire. 
The latter author, remarking that our brain and 
the outer world are to us images of the same 
order, refuses to admit that the brain, which is 
only a very small part of these images, can explain 
and contain the other and much larger part, which 
comprises the vast universe. This would amount 
to saying that the whole is comprised in the part. 



272 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

I believe that this objection is analogous to the 
one just stated with less ingenuity. 

It is interesting to see how M. Bergson gets 
out of the difficulty which he himself raised. 
Being unwilling to bring forth from the molecular 
movement of the brain the representation of the 
world, or to superpose the representation on this 
movement as in the parallelist hypothesis, he has 
arrived at a theory, very ingenious but rather 
obscure, which consists in placing the image of "the 
world outside the brain, this latter being reduced 
to a motor organ which executes the orders of 
the mind. 

We thus have four philosophical theories, which, 
while trying to reconcile mind with matter, give 
to the representation a different position in regard 
to cerebral action. The spiritualist asserts the 
complete independence of the representation in 
relation to cerebral movement; the materialist 
places it after, the parallelist by the side of, the 
cerebral movement ; M. Bergson puts it in front. 

I must confess that the last of these systems, 
that of M. Bergson, presents many difficulties. 
As he does not localise the mind in the body, he 
is obliged to place our perception — that is to say, 
a part of ourselves — in the objects perceived ; for 
example, in the stars when we are looking at them. 
The memory is lodged in distant planes of con- 
sciousness which are not otherwise defined. We 



RECAPITULATION 



273 



understand with difficulty these emigrations, these 
crumblings into morsels of our mind. This would 
not matter if our author did not go so far as to 
maintain that the sensory nerves of the brain are 
not sensory nerves, and that the severance of them 
does not suppress sensations, but simply the motor 
efforts of these sensations. All the physiologist 
in me protests against the rashness of these 
interpretations. 

The principal difficulties of the problem of the 
union between the mind and the body proceed 
from the two following facts, which seem incom- 
patible. On the one hand, our thought is con- 
ditioned by a certain intra-cerebral movement of 
molecules and atoms ; and, on the other hand, this 
same thought has no consciousness of this mole- 
cular movement. It does not know the path of 
the wave in our nerves; it does not suspect, for 
example, that the image of the objects is reversed 
in the retina, or that the excitements of the right 
eye for the most part go into the left hemisphere. 
In a word, it is no anatomist. It is a very curious 
thing that our consciousness enters into relation 
only with the extra-cerebral, the external objects, 
and the superficies of our bodies. 

From this, this exact question suggests itself: a 

molecular wave must come as far as our visual 

cerebral centre for us to have the perception of 

the object before our eyes; how is it that our con- 

s 



274 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

sciousness is unaware of this physiological event 
from which it depends, and is borne towards the 
distant object as if it sprang forth outside our 
nervous system? 

Let us first remark, that if we do not perceive 
this wave, yet it must contain all we know of the 
external object, for it is evident that we only know 
of it that part of its properties which it transmits to 
our nerves and our nerve centres. All the known 
substance of the external object is, then, implied 
in this vibration ; it is there, but it is not there 
by itself. The vibration is the work of two colla- 
borators; it expresses at once the nature of the 
object which provokes it, and the nature of the 
nerve apparatus which transports it, as the furrow 
traced in the wax of the phonograph implies the 
joint action of an aerial vibration with a stylus, 
a cylinder, and a clock-work apparatus. 

I therefore suppose — and this is, I say it plainly, 
but an hypothesis — that if the nervous vibration 
so little resembles the external excitant which 
generates it, it is because the factor nervous system 
superadds its effect to the factor excitant. Let us 
imagine, now, that we have managed to separate 
these two effects, and we shall understand that 
then the nervous event so analysed might re- 
semble only the object, or only the nervous system. 
Now, of these two effects, one is constant, that one 
which represents the action of the nervous system; 



RECAPITULATION 275 

there is another which varies with each new per- 
ception, and even with every moment of the same 
perception — that is to say, the object. It is not 
impossible to understand that the consciousness 
remains deaf to the constant and sensitive to the 
variable element. There is a law of consciousness 
which has often been described, and fresh applica- 
tions of which are met with daily : this is, that the 
consciousness only maintains itself by change, 
whether this change results from the exterior by 
impressions received, or is produced from the in- 
terior by movements of the attention. Let us here 
apply this empirical law, and admit that it contains 
a first principle. It will then be possible for us to 
understand that the consciousness formed into a 
dialyser of the undulation may reject that constant 
element which expresses the contribution of the 
nervous system, and may lay bare the variable 
element which corresponds to the object : so that 
an intestinal movement of the cerebral substance, 
brought to light by this analytical consciousness, 
may become the perception of an object. By ac- 
cepting this hypothesis, we restore to the sensory 
nerves and to the encephalic centres their property 
of being the substrata of representation, and avoid 
the objection made above against materialism and 
parallelism, that they did not explain how a 
cerebral movement, which is material, can en- 
gender the perception of an object which differs 



276 THE MIND AND THE BRAIN 

greatly from it and is yet as material as the 
movement itself. There is not here, properly 
speaking, either generation, transformation, or 
metamorphosis. The object to be perceived is 
contained in the nerve current. It is, as it were, 
rolled up in it ; and it must be made to go forth 
from the wave to be seen. This last is the work 
of the consciousness. 



INDEX 



Abstractions, character of, 8 
" Archives de Psychologic," 198 
Aristotle, 106, 129, 169, 186-190, 

201, 265 
Association, "inseparable," 116 
Automatism, 250 

Bain, 3, 121, 186, 189, 219, 245, 
252 

Belfast, congress at, 207 
Bergson, 47, 86 ; theory of 

images and brain, 226-230; 

refutation of, 230-233 ; 259, 

271, 272 
Berkeley, 47, 109, 225, 226, 227, 

271 

Berthelot, 147 

Binet, 3, 191 ; theory of mind 

and brain, 236, 255 
Body, union with mind, 179 ; 

Aristotle on body and soul, 

188 

Brain, 225, 226, 227; and con- 
sciousness, 236, 237, 247 
Brieux, 209 
Brillouin, 10 

Categories, 106, 107, 114, 190, 
263 

Change, law of consciousness, 
245 

Cognition, 15, 33, 58, 98, 105, 
107, 117, 123, 140, 141, 145, 
153. 155. 157, 162, 184, 190, 
195, 208, 225, 228, 241, 243, 
246, 251, 260, 262, 264, 266 

Comte, Auguste, 213 

Concepts, method of, 6, 7 ; 
metaphysics of, 8, 223 



Conclusion, 234-255 
I Condillac, 98 
, Condition, normal, 80 

Consciousness, 58, 195 ; anatomi- 
cal ignorance of, 237, 238; 
definition of : relation subject- 
object, categories of the under- 
standing, separability of the 
consciousness from its object, 
idealism, 96-134; as dialyser, 
244 ; law of, 275, 276 ; and 
nerve current, 247-255 ; mani- 
festations of, 236 ; of a state, 
63 ; origin of, 180 ; phenomena 
of, 17, 88, 190, 210, 223 ; use- 
less luxury, 222 

Contiguity, law of, 169, 170, 173 

Current, motor, psychology or, 
248, 249 ; nerve, 246, 249, 250, 
251, 252, 276 ; sensory, 250 

Danteo, " Les Lois Naturelles," 
10 

Dastre, "La Vie et la Mort," 10, 
145 

Demooritus, 158 
Descartes, 64, 77, 7* 97. 15*. *93 
" Discours de la Methode," 
77 

Dreams, 82, 87 

Dualism, of mind and matter, 
69, 71, 182, 140, 155, 182, 254, 
263 

Duality, of sensation, 78; of 
ideation, 78 ; of consciousness 
and object, 190; of nature, 
224 ; of soul ana body, 269 

Duhem, evolution of mechanics, 
10 



278 



INDEX 



Ebbinghaus, 160, 161 
Eccentricity, law of, 247 
Effort, psychological nature of, 

94 ; sensation of, 249, 263 
Ego, 75, 86, 88, 89, 99, 152 ; and 

non-ego, 96, 100, 101 
Emotions, definitions of the, 

88-95. 263 
Energy, 30,31 
Enumeration, method of, 6 
Epiphenomenon, 222 
"Etude Ezperimentale de l'ln- 

telligenoe " (Binet), 8 
Excitant, the, 18, 21, 22, 83, 

244, 257, 258, 266 
Existence or reality, 84, 85 
Externospeotion, 140-146 

Fathebs of the Church, 201 
Fechner, 149 
Ferrier, 73 

Finality, definition of, 163 
Flournoy, 70, 73, 182, 191, 198 

Geneva, congress of .philosophy 

Gobfot, E, 44 La Finalite sans 
Intelligence," 164 

Habit, law of, 250 
Hallucinations, 81, 82, 87 
Hamilton, William, 47, 65, 256 ; 

" Philosophy " of, 47 
Herbart, 90, 91 
Herrick, 0. L., 86 
Heterogeneity, axiom of, 182, 

183; principle of, 8, 73. 74, 

182, 183, 194, 205* 2o6> 2o8 t 

215, 269 
4 ' Histoire du Materialisme " 

(Lange), 137 
Hume, 64, 109 
Huxley, 11 8, 222 

Idealism, principle of, 64, 73, 
1 19-125 ; refutation of, 95-200 
Ideation, duality of, 78, 80 
Identity, 221 



Image, definition of the, 76-87, 
263 

Intellectualism, definition of, 166 

Intelligence, only inactive con- 
sciousness, 117; materialist 
explanation of, 204 

Inter-aotionism, 185 

Introspection, 140-146 

Intuition, 269 

Jam SB, William, theory of emo- 
tion, 91-94 ; 100, 163 
"Journal of Philosophy," 100 

Kant, 34, 106, 107, 108, 181, 

190, 235 
Kelvin, Lord, 11 
Knowable, the, 4, 5, 7 
Knowledge and its object, 55- 

59; two groups of; 98 
Kulpe, 160 

" L'Ame et le Corps," 3 

" La Finalite sans Intelligence " 

(Goblot), 164 
" La Nouvelle Monadologie " 

(Renouvier et Prat), 64 
" La Philosophie de Hamilton," 

47 

" La Vie et la Mort " (Dastre), 10 
Ladd, 58 n. 

Lange, theory of emotion, 91 ; 
"Histoire du Materialisme," 
137 

Law of contiguity, 162 n., 169, 

170. 173 

Law of eccentricity, 247 

Law of mental expression re- 
jected, 162 n. ; mental distin- 
guished from physical, 163 

Law, psychological compared 
with natural, 167, 168 

Law of relativity of cognition, 
245 

Law of similarity, 162 n., 169, 170 
Le Bon, Gostave Involution 

delaMatiere"), 27 
"Le Paralogisme psycho-physi- 

ologique" (Bergson), 226 



INDEX 



279 



"Le Personnellisme " (Renou- 

vier), 226 
" Lecons de Philosophie (Rabier), 

148 

Leibnitz, 129, 195, 220 
Littre*, 207 
Locke, 139 

" Logical and Psychological 
Distinction between the 
True and the Real " (Herriok), 
86 

Lotse, 73, 148 
Lyons, 60 

Maoh, 160 

Materialism, origin and defini- 
tion of, 201-203; refutation 
of, 203-214 ; 269, 275 

"Matiere et Mlmoire" (Berg- 
son), 86, 226, 229, 230, 271 

Matter, definition of, 3-51 ; de- 
scription of, 256-260 ; distinct 
from mind, 3 ; domain of phy- 
sics, 6; mechanical theories 
of, 27-43 ; non-significant pro- 
perties of, 172, 173; X of, 18, 
21, 25, 49 

Mechanics, fetichism of, 220 

Mechanism, nervous, to imitate 
intellectual act, 221 

Metaphysics, 128 n., 234, 235 

" M6taphysique et Psychologic " 
(Flournoy), 182 

Method, rule of, 5 ; of concepts 
and enumeration, 6 

Meudon, 152 

Mill, John Stuart, 13, 19, 47*64, 
116, 121 

Mind, definition of, 55-175 ; 
260-266; distinction between, 
and matter, 3 ; domain of 
psychology, 6 ; incomplete life 
of, 179-190; inseparability of, 
and matter, 185 ; inventory of, 
56 ; " Mind and Body " (Bain), 

3.219 
Monadism, 195 
Monism, 69, 271 
Motion, 35 



Movement, molecular, 73 ; vi- 
bratory, 31 
Mailer, 21 
Munsterberg, 160 

Nebvbs, motor, 228, 230 ; power 
of distinction, 22; specific 
energy of, 21, 46, 242; sen- 
sory, 228, 230, 232, 273, 275 ; 
vibrations of, 242, 243 ; ner- 
vous system, 16, 17, 24, 25, 44, 
45, 4»» "5. "8, 241, 257, 258, 
274. 275 

Noumena, 34, 35, 43, 109, 142**., 
260, 271 

Object. See Subject 
Observation, 235 
Organ, function of, material, 206 
Ostwald, 10 

PA2TO ATEBIALISM, 70 

Panpsychism, 70, 195, 198 

Parallelism, definition of, 214- 
220; refutation of, 221-224; 
251; 252, 270-272; 275 

Parallelist theory, 132 

Perceptible, the, 84, 8j 

Perception, intermediate char- 
acter of, 15; of a child, 232 

Personality, formation of, 100 

Phenomena, auditory, 37 ; physi- 
cal, 30, 31 ; visual, 37 

Phenomenism of Berkeley*, 109 
n. 1 

" Philosophical Review," 70 

Philosophy, history of, 200 

•« Philosophy of Hamilton" (J. 

8. Mill), 47 
Pilon, 113 
Plato, 201 

Preadaptation, process of, 164- 
175 

Prince, Morton, 70 
Probabilism forced upon us, 174 
"Psychical Review," 86 
" Psychologic," 112 
" Psychologic du Raisonnement" 
(Binet), 113 



28o IN 

Psychology, definitions of, 135- 
I75» 265, 266 

Rabies, E., 98, 112, 148 

Radio-activity, 27 

Reason developed according to 

law, 169 
Recapitulation, 256-276 
Reid, Thomas, 47, 65, 259 
Relativity, principle of, 104, 109, 

252 

Renouvier, 64, 97, 106, 205, 226 
44 Revue Qenerale des Sciences," 
10 

" Revue de Mdtaphysique et de 

Morale," 164, 226 
M Revue de Philosophic," 10 
Raymond, Du Bois, 73 
Ribot, 137 

Search, direction of, 5, 6 

Sensation, 10, 14, 35, 44, 50, 51, 
55 ; definition of, 60-75 » m * 8 - 
trusted by physicists, 28-30 ; 
only means of acquaintance 
with outer world, 10-26, 50, 
256-259 ; physical or mental, 
261-266 ; visual, 73 

Sensibility, cerebral, 239, 240; 
employment in physiology, 61 

Separation of consciousnessfrom 
its object, 126-134 

Similarity. See Law 

Simon, Dr., 209 

Societe Francaise de Philosophie, 
256 

Soul, distinct from body, 77; 

union of body and, 179-276 
Souls, disembodied, 45 
Specificity of Nerves. See Nerves 
Spencer, Herbert, 245 
Spiritualism, refutation of, 192, 

195, 268, 269 



Strong, If., 195 

Subject, defined and distin- 
guished from object, 96 

Substance, definition of, 102 

Substantial ism, 134 

Symbols, mechanical theories of 
matter, 27-43 

System, nervous, 16, 17, 24, 25, 
44,45,48, 115, 228, 241, 257, 
258, 274, 275 

Tains, 79 

Theories, modern, 225-233 
Thought, not a movement, 7, 8 ; 

characteristics of, 76 
Truth, 84, 85 
Tyndall, 89, 207 

Unconsciousness, 127-133 
Understanding, categories of 

the, 103-118 
Unknowable, the, 25, 26 
Union of mind and body, prob- 
lem of, 273; of soul and 
body, 179-276 

Verne, Jules, 267 
Vogt, Karl, 204 

Wave, molecular, 273, 274, 276 ; 

nerve, 243 
Will, the most characteristic 

psychical function, 166, 167 
World, assembly of sensations, 

26; our ideas, 65; external 

known only by our sensations, 

10-26; 50,256-259 

X of matter, 18, 21, 25, 49 

Zoologist, visual sensationS*of, 
13 



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